When God Is Silent - Faith Without Consolation II

On the terror of calling into the void and hearing nothing answer

“O my God, I call by day and You do not answer; I call by night and I find no reprieve.”

Psalm 21 (22):3, Grail Translation

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Series Introduction — Faith Without Consolation

There are seasons in the spiritual life when prayer brings no comfort, when God seems silent, and when faith no longer feels like faith. The fathers and modern elders did not hide this reality. They lived it. They wrote of the darkness that strips the soul of every support, not to destroy it, but to bring it into a deeper and more truthful relationship with God. This series speaks to those who remain before Him without consolation, without clarity, and sometimes without hope, yet refuse to turn away. It is written not to explain suffering, but to accompany those passing through it. There is a silence that comforts.

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And there is a silence that terrifies.

The silence of God belongs to the second.

It is not the peaceful quiet of early morning or the stillness of the cell when the heart is at rest. It is the silence that answers prayer with nothing. The silence that follows tears. The silence that remains unmoved while the body weakens and the heart fractures under the weight of what it cannot carry.

It is the silence that makes a man begin to question not only God, but reality itself.

He has spoken. He has cried out. He has begged for relief, for clarity, for some sign that he has not been forgotten.

Nothing comes.

No voice.

No consolation.

No intervention.

Only the continuation of what he hoped would end.

The fathers did not hide this.

They lived inside it.

Job cried out, “I cry to You and You give me no answer; I stand before You, but You do not heed me.” He did not whisper this. He did not soften it. He accused heaven of absence.

And heaven did not answer him immediately.

Christ Himself entered this silence.

In Gethsemane He prayed with such intensity that His sweat became like drops of blood falling upon the earth. He asked for the cup to pass. He asked for another way.

No other way was given.

On the Cross He cried out the words that every suffering soul eventually learns, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

This is not poetry.

This is the experience of divine silence spoken by God Himself.

There are those who live inside this silence for years.

They continue to pray because they do not know how to stop. But prayer feels different now. It no longer carries warmth. It no longer carries reassurance. It feels like speaking into an endless expanse where nothing returns.

This silence exposes everything.

It exposes the hidden belief that God’s presence should feel a certain way. It exposes the expectation that prayer should produce comfort. It exposes the quiet bargain the heart makes with God. I will believe in You if You remain perceptible to me.

But God does not submit Himself to perception.

St. Isaac the Syrian writes that God sometimes withdraws the awareness of His presence so that the soul may be purified of every dependency that is not God Himself. Not the feeling of God. Not the consolation of God. God Himself.

This purification feels like loss.

Because everything the soul used to rely upon disappears.

Elder Sophrony speaks of this as a kind of existential death. The man stands before God without support, without emotional confirmation, without inward reassurance. He stands without knowing whether he is heard.

This is the place where many turn back.

Not because they hate God.

Because they can no longer find Him.

And yet there are those who remain.

Not because they are strong.

Because something in them refuses to let go.

St. Silouan lived in this silence for years. He prayed and felt nothing. He called and heard nothing. He was tempted by despair so profound that he believed himself already lost.

And Christ did not immediately remove this darkness.

Instead, He gave him a single command.

Keep your mind in hell and despair not.

Remain in the truth of your condition without fleeing.

Remain without demanding consolation.

Remain without requiring proof.

This is the most terrible and most sacred place in the spiritual life.

Because here, the soul is no longer sustained by experience.

It is sustained by reality alone.

There are those who say they can no longer feel God’s presence.

What they do not realize is that God’s presence is not measured by feeling.

It is measured by existence itself.

If God were absent, they would not exist.

Their continued existence is itself the sign of His nearness.

But this nearness is hidden.

Not to torment them.

To free them.

To free them from loving God for what He gives.

So they may love Him for what He is.

This love does not feel like warmth.

It feels like endurance.

It feels like remaining when every instinct says to leave.

It feels like standing before a silent heaven and refusing to walk away.

Archimandrite Zacharias writes that when a man continues to stand before God without consolation, he offers the greatest possible testimony of love.

Not the love born of reward.

The love born of truth.

God’s silence is not His absence.

It is His concealment.

He conceals Himself not because He has left, but because He is drawing the soul beyond perception into communion that no longer depends on sensation.

The soul does not understand this while it suffers.

It only knows that it has been stripped of everything.

But God remains.

Hidden.

Silent.

Nearer than breath.

Waiting for the moment when the soul realizes that it has not been abandoned.

It has been brought into the very place where Christ Himself stood.

Alone.

Silent.

And held by the Father, even there.