Daily Thought For January 12, 2022

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 The Joy of Consolation

In 1941, the then forty-one-year-old Julien Green recounted in his diary a spiritual experience of his fifteenth year: 

The memory of a winter evening has stuck in my mind more clearly than any other instance. It happened in the pension I tried to describe in The Strange River. My father and I shared the same bedroom. I was in bed; my father was saying his prayers. All of a sudden, I was seized with an unutterable happiness, a happiness of spirit that tore me free from myself. For a few minutes my soul was completely absorbed in God. I could not have said what was taking place in me, but my thoughts, instead of wandering here and there, as they usually did, came to a standstill in a sort of rapture that I have never experienced before. And the very words I use in trying to describe the indescribable only serve to confuse my memories. And yet, this is not so. What lives in my memory is the feeling of deep security — a little of which still remains — the inexpressible peace enjoyed by the soul when it takes shelter under the all-powerful wing of the Lord. 

We stand on holy ground as we contemplate this striking experience of grace. Clearly, this is an experience of rich spiritual consolation: Julien feels “unutterable happiness…of spirit,” he is “completely absorbed in God,” and is blessed with “the inexpressible peace enjoyed by the soul when it takes shelter under the all-powerful wing of the Lord.” Julien’s spiritual consolation is simply poured out upon him, without any prayerful preparation on his part: reclining in bed, “All of a sudden, I was seized with an unutterable happiness.” The consolation is intense to a degree that Julien has never known previously — “a sort of rapture that I have never experienced before”; he senses that he is attempting to “describe the indescribable.” The spiritual consolation has an identifiable beginning and end in time: it endures “for a few minutes.” The grace of this profound consolation, however, has never faded in Julien’s heart; that moment, he writes, “lives in my memory,” as does the feeling of “inexpressible peace enjoyed by the soul” in God, “a little of which still remains.” As we read Julien’s account, we sense that he is given extraordinary blessings through this experience of consolation; the loving touch of God seems unmistakably present and powerfully operative in Julien during this grace-filled time.

Gallagher, Timothy M., OMV. Spiritual Consolation: An Ignatian Guide for Greater Discernment . The Crossroad Publishing Company. Kindle Edition. 

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