Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. —Matthew 7:7-8
How often do you feel separated from God? So often, time greets us with doubt, shame, or loneliness. Our minds, hearts, and spirit cannot see past the dense fog between us and God's grace. These are moments we do not choose, but they choose us. St. John of the Cross wrote a poem called "Dark Night of the Soul" that aptly illustrates this melancholy. Nights when faith is difficult to find and God seems absent. The poem reads:
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.
—Dark Night Of The Soul
Our hearts know the presence of the Divine, but the light by which we see is faint. Here we must learn a hard yet simple truth. The doubts we have must be held in tension with the faith in our hearts. Shame can be put to rest by exposing it to the light burning inside us. Loneliness will find communion in the sacred silence.
When Jesus speaks in Matthew—‘Ask, and you shall receive… Knock, and the door will be opened’—he is not calling from some far-off place. The call is coming from inside the house. Recognizing the Divine presence within us is the hardest and yet most transformative epiphany. Even in the darkest of times, we are only separated by an open door. The poem concludes with a hopeful stanza from St. John of the Cross:
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.
—Dark Night Of The Soul
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