Spiritual consolations & desolations are the positive & negative echoes of a person’s own being, the manifestations of our hidden affections abiding and active in the human heart.
Spiritual consolations and desolations are the measures of the soundness or sickness of the person’s human nature.
Spiritual consolation will always be experienced in the person’s heart as the more natural, more fitting, deeper, truer experience. A sign of self-surrender.
Spiritual desolation exposes a person’s affective disorder and allows him to work out inordinate attachments, to allow healing in much the same way that a person works out a cramp in a muscle. Always be experienced as something running counter to a person’s authentic inner core. A sign of self-refusal.
Desolations have many valuable lessons to teach:
- awakens a lax conscience (Ex #314)
- brings a person’s sloth and tepidity to light (Ex #322)
- tests & teaches the person that consolations are strictly God’s gifts (Ex #322).
“Our hearts become much wiser through desolation” ~ Msgr Trapp
And yet, Ignatius ALWAYS has the believer FIGHT this experienced state of the soul (Ex #319).
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