Adoration today.
That “thing”.
While at adoration today I experienced “the thing” again. It is almost like a panic attack. From time to time, since I was little, I experienced “it” - especially on Sundays.
When I was little, and almost until my teens, “blue laws” were in effect. Stores were not open, nor were bars. Everything was closed on Sundays. As a kid I always felt there was nothing to do on Sundays. There were no Perpetual Adoration chapels back then, and being from a non-practicing Catholic family, church stuff wasn’t a part of our life.
Sundays were boring. By midday, after having attended Mass, I believe I experience what the monastic fathers would term, the “noon day devil” - acedia. I called it “the thing”. It caused me to run for money to get an ice cream cone or go to a movie. (My family never did family things, and we never had company.)
Feast day devils.
It often hit me on Sundays or feast days - a Franciscan priest I knew referred to this as “feast day devils”. It is a feeling that the bottom dropped out of your stomach, an anxious feeling sometimes. Spiritual exercises are not at all satisfying, sometimes they are even repulsive. (Or, as when I was younger, a violent assault of temptations.) You may experience the consolation of “knowing you are praying or at adoration” but you dread leaving, because you will be plunged into that void again.
That is why Rose’s line in “Moonstruck” always resonated with me when she said, “Cosmo, you’re gonna die!” She realized her husband cheated because of his existential fear of death, that fear of disolving into oblivion. (That, BTW, and I’m convinced of this, is part of the reason why many people do drugs and become alcoholics, even sex addicts.) It seemed I understood this once again today - it seemed as if Our Lord wanted me to understand it.
Avoiding the cross.
When I lived in Boston, this “noon day devil” thing was one reason I fell away for a short time. It was a dreadful experience. Less informed persons would say it was the dark night, in fact they did - no, it was acedia. (That is why wanna-be contemplatives must talk to “learned men” as Teresa of Avila would say, or have an experienced confessor. People so like to think everthing is the dark night. We should be so lucky as to have God do everything for us like that.)
The emptiness of my solitude, my inexperience, and dryness in my spiritual exercises, along with a difficulty in handling temptations - often panicking me when they presented - pretty much exhausted me. My experience of self was nothing - boredom - which I would not at all admit, to myself or my spiritual director. (Big mistake! Big! Don’t try to appear spiritually mature to your spiritual director - especially if he is not.) My greatest fear was that it wouldn’t end - I’d be stuck in my helplessness forever. So I went out to the bars to escape - I know - you would be surprised how easy it is to backslide, all of you convinced of your holiness. (Anyway - it was the disco era!)
Love your misery.
Having said all this - I experienced “the thing” again today. The nice thing about getting older, you learn from your mistakes - although you are never secure! You slowly, gradually, learn to stop trying to escape the cross of your misery. You learn to have faith, and you begin to understand hope overcomes all - you cling to that confidence, even if it is only in your confidence. You also discover love is not a feeling - it isn’t a gratification.
Sometimes when you look at Jesus, face to face in that bland host, totally silent, and you feel nothing - and that scares you - something is happening, but you don’t know what it is. I can’t remember the psalm, but the penitent expresses to the Lord, “I was stupid and did not understand”…
Without him we can do nothing.
It also occurred to me, that sometimes we “say” prayers, or read, even take notes in a journal, to fill time - to avoid this experience of our impotence…when sometimes, it is an invitation to “sit alone and in silence” with Jesus who is alone in this august Sacrament of love. And sometimes we leave Him there - because we are not “getting anything out of it”. Sometimes we are stupid and just don’t understand. Yes, I left after an hour. I was stupid, and did not understand.
My Jesus Mercy!
