Darkening · Slavery · Rebellion · Spiritual death · The Heart of the Lord Jesus
RETURN TO THE SPIRITUAL PATH
EXPLORE AGES −1 TO −10
WHAT IS THE SPIRITUAL DESCENT PATH?
Every person created in the image and likeness of God longs to meet their Creator; it is a natural desire, etched deeply in our consciousness, so the idea of cutting off all relationship with God is unthinkable. However, the distractions of the world, evil desires, and our heartbreak¹ can cause a cooling in our desire to meet the one who is good. The gradual separation of the soul from God is called the spiritual Descending Path.
¹ Acedia: spiritual laziness.
DARKNESS OF THE SOUL
Spiritual Ages −1 to −3
Estrangement from the Good Lord almost never begins with a violent breakup. Generally it begins in a much quieter way: the soul is neglected. Prayer is losing importance, the desire to approach the Eucharist and the Church decreases, the Word of God no longer arouses the same interest and other things begin to little by little take the place that previously belonged to God. The person may continue to consider themselves a believer and even maintain some religious practices, but internally something has begun to fade. It is as if the light with which I was previously able to clearly recognize spiritual things slowly began to weaken. The Divine Work calls precisely this state lukewarmness and confusion, and describes it as a progressive loss of the inner light of living faith.
At first it may seem like nothing serious is happening. There is simply less fervor, a certain spiritual laziness, less desire to pray and greater ease in neglecting the Eucharist and the life of the Church. The real danger is that the person begins to get used to this situation and even thinks that it is normal to live like this. Little by little the person’s ability to spiritually distinguish between truth and error weakens. This is the first depth of obscuration.
If the estrangement continues, worldly interests begin to occupy more and more space. Sensible or intellectual satisfactions are sought, the fight against temptations becomes weaker and venial sins stop producing the same concern. The person can maintain a faith in word while leading, in practice, an increasingly worldly life. Immediate pleasure then begins to present itself as a poor substitute for the happiness the person previously found in God. Prayer clearly reflects this change: it may continue to exist, but it becomes heavy, distracted or mechanical, and the spontaneous desire to meet the Good Lord diminishes. Spiritual confusion, inner doubts, discouragement, irritability and something especially sad also appear: the soul begins to forget the divine experiences that previously sustained it; the person no longer remembers the sweetness of God with the same vividness.
When the darkening becomes profound, there appears a growing indifference towards God and towards sacred things. What previously inspired respect can begin to provoke indifference and even ridicule or laughter. The soul seeks more insistently to fill its emptiness through pleasures, distractions, ambitions or other substitutes, but none can give it back what it is losing. And here the danger becomes much greater: the soul can begin to get used to mortal sin and open the door to subtle demonic influences.
That is why it is important to understand this state well. Darkening does not necessarily mean that the person has consciously rejected the Good Lord. We are not yet in rebellion. What has happened is more gradual: the person have begun to get used to living without Him. And precisely because it is gradual it can be difficult to recognize it. The person continues with the person’s work, the person’s family, the person’s entertainment and the person’s worries; outwardly the person’s life may seem normal. However, internally the light goes out, the conscience loses sensitivity and what previously seemed clearly incompatible with friendship with God begins to be justified or seen as something unimportant. Getting used to living without God is the great danger of the Darkening of the Soul.
SEE THE Spiritual AgeS
SOUL SLAVERY
Spiritual Ages −4 to −6
Here the estrangement takes a much more serious step. In the Darkening, the person was little by little losing the inner light and getting used to living far from the Good Lord; in Slavery, that which began as a concession or an occasional sin begins to acquire dominion over the person. It is no longer just about falling: certain passions, habits or sins begin to govern the person’s way of living.
The person may realize that what they are doing is harmful to them, they may even want to stop and experience moments of regret, but discover that it is increasingly difficult for them to do so. The will weakens and habitual sin begins to create a true inner dependence. Hence the name of this state: Enslavement of the Soul. The freedom with which it was created does not disappear, but it is increasingly conditioned by what it has given itself to.
At the beginning there is still fighting. The person falls, regrets it, tries to get up and falls again. The person can maintain a certain religious life and knows, deep down, that something is not right; however, sin begins to repeat itself and become habitual. The resolutions are short-lived and what the person could previously reject with relative ease begins to exert an increasing force on the person.
When slavery is consolidated, life begins to organize itself around that which dominates it. It is no longer just a sin that appears from time to time: it can influence decisions, relationships, the use of money, time, entertainment and even the way we justify our own behavior. In order to continue living this way without permanently facing the conflict of conscience, the person begins to create justifications. What the person previously recognized as bad may begin to be presented to herself as understandable, inevitable, or even normal.
Prayer also suffers the consequences. If it still exists, it may appear only in times of need, fear or suffering. Sincerely approaching the Good Lord is increasingly difficult, because doing so forces us to look at a life that the person may not be willing to change. Faith may still exist, but the living relationship with God is deeply weakened. The voice of conscience does not disappear, although it becomes increasingly easier to ignore it.
In deep Slavery, the dominance of passions can become so strong that the person begins to feel incapable of living any other way. What initially promised pleasure or freedom ends up producing precisely the opposite: dependence, emptiness and suffering. Sin is no longer just something the person do; it has begun to seriously affect the way the person live.
And this is perhaps one of the most painful aspects of the Enslavement of the Soul: the person sought outside of God a freedom that ended up becoming a chain.
However, even here we must not look at this brother as someone lost. The brother continues to be loved by the Good Lord. As long as the brother retain some awareness of the brother’s situation, as long as the brother can still recognize the suffering caused by what dominates the brother, and as long as there is some desire within the brother to get out, a door to grace remains open.
The real danger appears when the soul stops fighting and begins not only to accept the soul’s chains, but to defend what enslaves the soul. Then the descent can lead to the third and most serious progressive state of Moving Away from God: the Rebellion of the Soul.
SEE THE Spiritual AgeS
Rebellion of the Soul
Spiritual Ages −7 to −9
When the slavery of sin is prolonged and the soul fails to break its chains, an even more serious state can begin: the Rebellion of the Soul. It is no longer just a person weakened by the person’s passions, who knows what is wrong but cannot find the strength to abandon it. Now the person begins to consciously justify the person’s distancing from God and to resist the person’s voice, the person’s law and His call. To alleviate the burden of conscience, first the person relativizes evil, then the person redefines good according to the person’s own convenience and, finally, the person may openly oppose that or those who try to show the person the truth.
This rebellion does not always manifest itself in the same way. In some people it remains hidden under an external appearance of religiosity, while internally there is indifference; others build reasons to justify their separation from God; and in others the rejection becomes open and direct. Little by little, a strong resistance to conversion develops: the person constantly justifies himself, accepts from faith only that which coincides with the person’s own way of thinking and becomes convinced that God understands His behavior and that, in reality, what The person does is not so serious. Prayer can be abandoned almost completely or maintained solely as a quest for protection or personal benefit.
As the rebellion deepens, the relationship with others also changes. Contempt for the Church, for truth and for sacred things may appear; later, the person may stop being content with living according to the person’s or the person’s own decisions and begin to actively spread sin and lies, producing destructive behavior towards oneself and others. In its extreme form, the opposition is directed against God himself: the spiritual darkness becomes so deep that any form of light is rejected and can even lead to the direct worship of evil.
The tragedy of this state consists, therefore, in that the soul is no longer only chained: it begins to defend its own chains. That which in the Darkening began as lukewarmness and confusion, and which in Slavery ended up dominating the will through passions, vices and dependencies, now becomes a conscious opposition to the truth that could liberate it. Inner freedom is deeply damaged, the heart hardens and the capacity to respond to grace becomes less and less. If this process continues to its final consequences, the Rebellion can finally lead to spiritual Death, age −10.
SEE THE Spiritual AgeS
SPIRITUAL DEATH
Spiritual Age −10
What happens in the soul?
This is the last level of the descending spiritual path. The soul has become completely disconnected from the life of grace. The soul no longer perceives God, the soul does not seek Him or desire Him and The soul has lost the sense of His own spiritual condition. Even opposition can disappear: the soul is deeply anesthetized.
Outwardly the person can continue leading the person’s or the person’s ordinary life, but internally there is a deep emptiness marked by superficiality and insensitivity. It can manifest itself as cold death—total indifference—, proud death—absolute self-sufficiency—or comfortable death—morally dissolved life without consciousness of guilt.
There is total abandonment of prayer. The soul no longer seeks God because it has stopped even feeling the need to seek Him.
The deepest danger is not recognizing one’s own situation. The soul has lost the sense of its spiritual condition and may not experience any need for conversion. A loss of meaning in life may also appear.
“The soul no longer perceives God, the soul does not seek Him, The soul does not desire Him.”
This is the outcome of the Descending Path. However, mercy has the last word.
THE Heart of the Lord Jesus
Mercy has the last word
We have reached the end of the descending spiritual path. The soul may have distanced itself to the point of ceasing to perceive God, to seek Him, and to desire Him. The soul may even have lost awareness of the soul’s own spiritual condition.
But here appears a truth that we must never forget: “The last word, always, always, is mercy.”
No matter how low the soul has fallen. the Good Lord comes to meet the soul with love and power. It does not even abandon the soul that has reached the state of spiritual Death.
When the soul is so hardened that it no longer hears a soft call, the Good Lord can allow events capable of breaking that indifference.
Internal rupture: some event breaks the self-sufficiency on which the person had built their life.
Saving humiliation: a borderline experience, even close to death, makes the person recognize their need for mercy again.
Crises, breaks, falls, voids and ruptures can then become instruments of mercy. Not because the Good Lord wants to destroy the soul, but because the soul wants to awaken it.
“Awake, you who sleep, rise from the dead and Christ will enlighten you.” — Ephesians 5:14
The distancing of man does not diminish the love of the Lord Jesus.
Among the promises traditionally associated with the revelations of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque is: “Sinners will find in my Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.”
His love remains ready to rescue those dearly loved. That is why the Heart of the Lord Jesus is found precisely at the end of the Descending Path: to remember that no depth of human alienation is greater than the soul’s mercy.
“The last word, always, always, is mercy.”
The Heart of the Lord Jesus is not a Spiritual Age or a progressive state. It is the meeting point between the descent of man and the mercy of God.
The soul that had been sunken can be rescued. “Our Lord Jesus rescues the soul from everything that harms it, removing it from the waters of death.”
Moved again by grace, the soul can respond, turn towards God and begin the ascending spiritual path: the Purgative Way.
BEGIN THE PURGATIVE PATH