Dealing with Spiritual Barrenness

Sometimes in life we experience barrenness. But do we look for the new life that can spring from it? In Scripture, Hannah was barren, but she begged the Lord for a son and Samuel was conceived. The wife of Manoah was barren when an angel appeared to her to tell her that she would become the mother of Samson.  And so it was. Elizabeth was barren. An angel appeared to her husband, Zechariah, telling him that Elizabeth would become the mother of John the Baptist. And so it happened.

Consider now barrenness of the spirit. More often than we would like to admit, we go through life in a trance-like state. At those times, we neither think about nor relate to life. We become incapable of loving, of acknowledging and of conforming ourselves to God-With-Us. Even as we wander in this arid waste, the grace of God is at work in us. We have only to recall the comment of Jacob after he had the dream of the ladder. “Surely the Lord is in the place and I was not aware of it” (Gen. 28:16). Since we live by faith and not by sight, we need to be content with our barrenness. God can and does work in us when we feel most useless. It is only when we admit that we are weak, that we can realize our need for God to manifest His strength and glory. May Christ, the shoot of the barren root of Jesse come and save us. Merton sums it up well in this often quoted prayer.


When The Road Ahead Is In Darkness
By Thomas Merton
Dear God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will never leave me to face my troubles all alone.

--Father Jerome Machar, OSCO