Something unexpected happened to me over the last three years as I began taking my Catholic faith more seriously.
The closer I tried to get to God, the more I noticed His absence.
That sounds contradictory. You would think that returning to prayer, Confession, the Rosary, and a more serious examination of my life would make God feel increasingly present. Sometimes it did. But there were also periods when prayer seemed quiet. I would speak to God and wonder if He heard me. I would ask for direction and receive what felt like silence.
Strangely, years earlier I rarely worried about God’s silence.
I think I know why now.
You don’t miss someone you aren’t looking for.
For much of my life, I was busy looking elsewhere. Like many people, I pursued happiness through relationships, accomplishments, possessions, recognition, creativity, and the approval of other people. None of these things are necessarily wrong in themselves. But I often expected them to satisfy something in me that they simply weren’t capable of satisfying.
God was there, but I wasn’t always paying much attention.
As my faith became more important to me, something else happened. I began recognizing my sins in a much more serious light. Things I once rationalized became harder to rationalize. Things I had dismissed as harmless began bothering my conscience. I became increasingly aware that sin wasn’t simply breaking a list of rules. It was allowing something to come between myself and the One I was finally learning to desire.
That realization brought me back to Confession.
It brought me back to prayer.
It gave me a desire to pray the Rosary more than I ever had before.
I began looking for anything that would draw me closer to God while becoming increasingly cautious about those things that might separate me from Him.
And that’s when His apparent absence began to feel heavy.
There were times when I prayed and felt nothing. There were times when I wanted reassurance and received silence. Sometimes the harder I searched for God’s presence, the more painfully aware I became that I couldn’t feel Him.
I eventually learned that this experience isn’t unique.
Many saints wrote about periods of spiritual dryness (times when prayer offered little emotional consolation and God seemed distant). Their experiences varied greatly, so I wouldn’t presume that my own struggles compare with theirs. But their writings taught me something important: the absence of consolation is not the same thing as the absence of God.
That distinction has become important to me.
Faith built entirely upon feelings becomes very fragile. If I believe God is near only when prayer feels powerful, peaceful, or emotionally satisfying, what happens when those feelings disappear?
Perhaps sometimes the deeper act of faith is simply saying:
I don’t feel You right now, Lord, but I am still here.
Jesus Himself gives us an extraordinary image of perseverance in Gethsemane. He did not escape anguish through prayer. He prayed through it:
“Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
— Luke 22:42
There is something very different about seeking God because He gives us consolation and seeking God because He is God.
I am still learning that difference.
I’ve also had to be careful because greater awareness of sin can become unhealthy if it turns into constant fear. There is a difference between having a sensitive conscience and endlessly searching ourselves for reasons God might reject us. Confession should return us to grace and trust, not imprison us in anxiety about whether we confessed perfectly enough.
I have had to learn that too.
Maybe what I once interpreted as God’s absence was sometimes an invitation to trust Him without demanding evidence that He was there.
The irony is that I probably notice God’s apparent absence today precisely because I desire His presence more than I once did.
Years ago, I could go about my life without thinking very much about whether I was close to God. Today, even a perceived distance bothers me. I want to return to prayer. I want Confession. I want the Eucharist. I want the Rosary. I want to remove whatever stands between God and me.
That longing itself tells me something.
Psalm 42 begins with one of the most beautiful descriptions of this kind of desire:
“As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.”
Perhaps spiritual dryness isn’t always evidence that something has gone wrong.
Sometimes it may reveal how thirsty we have become.
And perhaps one of the strange realities of growing closer to God is that we become increasingly aware of how desperately we need Him.
I no longer expect every prayer to produce an answer I can recognize. I don’t expect faith always to feel peaceful. And I’m learning not to measure God’s closeness by my emotions on any particular day.
Some days I feel His presence.
Some days I don’t.
But I continue praying.
Because somewhere along this journey, the question began changing.
Instead of constantly asking, “God, why can’t I feel You?”
I’m learning to say:
“Lord, even when I cannot feel You, help me remain faithful to You.”
Maybe that is part of what faith was supposed to be all along.
