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Dear Father Angelo,

You wrote that the Holy Mass is a memorial, and you mentioned Padre Pio’s words about the fact that one should approach mass as if one were with Mary and St. John on Calvary.

Now, that touched my weak spot, because in the last three and a half years, since I came back to the Church, every time I go to Mass, I come away renewed in my Christian being, but I always bring back a hidden pain in my soul.

Both during Mass and during the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, when I look at the Host or at the Tabernacle, I pray: “There is nothing in the visible or invisible world that surpasses in grandeur and glory what is there, every possible human desire is infinitely surpassed by what Jesus in the Eucharist wants to give us”.

Well, my poor mind knows and believes that. It wants to believe that. But as soon as I receive the Eucharist, my heart becomes sad because if on the one hand I know that God in His Word newly enters me, on the other hand I realize that this “me” is completely indifferent to the miracle occurring! 

You know, a few days before my first Communion, on May 1st, 1980, a general rehearsal was held with unconsecrated hosts. I was very excited, even though it was just a rehearsal, and I remember that when the host touched my tongue it was as if a bolt of joy struck me. Bizarre, because that was not Jesus. Imagine a few days later, when I was to receive Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time in my life, what my expectation was, and what the disappointment was when I felt absolutely nothing!

For several months to follow, when back again in front of the Blessed Sacrament I still hoped to relive something similar, but I only experienced a profound aridity. Furthermore, once I came across the enlightening reading of the Ascent of Mt. Carmel by St. John of the Cross, the adoration became for me an exhausting act, maintained only with great efforts of will. Doubling the torment, I was clearly aware about the fallacy of my own desire to repeat what I had experienced, but on the other hand it was impossible for me not to desire it. A bit like the smoker who knows that cigarettes are harmful to him but he cannot stop craving them or even stop smoking.

St. John of the Cross was so good in his writing that I understood how our sensitivity is not the way to hopefully relate to God, rather… if we ever have similar experiences, we should be careful and detach ourselves immediately, certain that God does directly in the heart of our spirit what He wants to tell us, either we notice it or not. Indeed, again according to St. John of the Cross, attachment to sensitive phenomena causes only a polarization towards the things of the world, to the detriment of spiritual progress.

I wish I desired the Eucharist, I wish I felt the need for it. I wish I cried every time I go to Mass and Christ offers Himself as a sacrifice once again.

Is it my fault? Do I commit a sin that blinds me to the action of the Spirit? I am in church with the Lord for an hour almost daily, in the evening I recite the Holy Rosary, the Dominican litanies (discovered thanks to you) and the prayers of St. Brigida.

I devour hagiographies, stories of visionaries, mystics, and apparitions, and every now and then I make a little pilgrimage to one of the numerous Marian Sanctuaries nearby.

I try to keep alive the fire, but despite this good curriculum of the good Christian, I feel as if I were making a fundamental mistake – or omission – which however I cannot identify, although I continue to invoke the Holy Virgin and the Holy Spirit to give me clarity and the grace to love Jesus.

A dear priest, whom I speak with every now and then, told me that love is not a feeling, but a will.

I ask you for help, Father, what should I do? I read and study so many things about Him, about His Most Holy Mother, His Angels, and His Saints that I really cannot say I do not believe with all my intellect, but at the same time I realize that my heart remains deaf and blind, and therefore incapable to sing His praises if not only with my mouth.

There are many other elements of my life that perhaps it would be worth exposing: I have been married in the Church for 5 years (previously civilly married and divorced, without children) and I have an 8-year-old daughter with my current wife, zero autoeroticism (undeserved grace of God) and no contraception (obviously there are shortages because of other sins, but as far as my limited discernment can tell I try to stay away from the deadly ones). Before the grace of my return to the Church in May 2018, I spent about twenty years looking for God in wrong places (New Age in almost all its forms and drugs, but never spiritualism, occultism or worse). I accused all these things in confession. My wife is not practicing, but she is not standing in my way, and she lets me manage our daughter’s Christian education.

I thank you from the deep of my heart, and as usual I will remember you in my Rosaries, 

The Priest’s answer

Dear reader,

I apologize for the long delay in replying to you, but only today I did get to your email dated 2021, October 11th.

1. You certainly found an answer in St. John of the Cross: we must not go after the Lord simply to experience consolation in our spirit. It would still be a matter of spiritual sensuality.

St. John of the Cross himself experienced the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit.

Perhaps you have not yet reached the dark night of the spirit, but surely you reached the dark night of the senses.

2. Recently, I read the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

I was struck by the fact that in the early days of his conversion he always felt ignited by a great interior fire and that he felt such great joy that it was difficult to hide.

3. Two years before dying, he asked the Lord for the grace to let him experience in his own body some of the pain that Christ suffered during His passion, and to make him feel in his soul some of that immense pain, because of the sins by humanity, that Jesus experienced on the cross.

The Lord satisfied him by the stigmata.

4. I think that other saints asked the Lord what St. Francis asked, but they got none. Yet they are saints all the same.

Perhaps the Lord made St. Francis experience so much joy to attract those who are at the beginning of the spiritual life, because the Lord attracts through a bond of goodness.

But when you grow a little, the Lord acts like mothers who no longer breastfeed their children because they want them to start eating solid foods.

5. Therefore, I urge you to continue in your intense practice of Christian life, even if you feel nothing.

Indeed, accept the tryout the Lord is giving you (that of feeling nothing) so that it can be offered for those who need it, to begin their journey of conversion.

Also accept it as atonement for the sins of your past.

6. I am convinced that when you offer something to the Lord, such as giving up these spiritual consolations, the Lord makes you feel something.

St. Thomas says that mortification is the spring for devotion, that is, for fervor.

Fervor does not always manifest itself with enjoyment because, first, fervor requires promptness.

But I am convinced that the Lord will not leave you completely arid.

The Lord himself pushed the Church to ask Him in the Oremus (in English: let us pray), recited at the end of the Veni Creator Spiritus (in English: Come, Creator Spirit), to always enjoy His consolation (et de eius semper consolatione gaudere, in English: and ever to rejoice in His consolation).

7. I thank you for the prayer you promised me.

I reciprocate and I bless you.

Father Angelo