Am I alone? Facing your brokenness to be healed
Our journey to healing starts with engaging the darkness within us. Here's a brief meditation portraying the effects of sin and death on our soul.
This piece is part of our “Am I?” series on healing and engaging your story. Catch the beginning of the series here and part 2 here.
Our Lord at the fateful hour of His Agony in the garden instructs Saint Peter that those who live by the sword will perish by it (Matthew 26:52).
Yet how much violence have we ourselves done to our own souls in times of agony because we did not believe there was any intrinsic value to us as we are? How many countless measures other than the Father’s love do we choose to weigh our value — whether by merit, achievement, status, or other things?
In so doing, violence is also done unto us by the world, who is more than willing at times to pile on its share of brokenness upon those who suffer. Yet, we are not to be conformed to this world, but are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).
Thus, to prove our worth and value is an impossible task which serves only to isolate and insulate our hearts from the only Source of Love capable of satisfying our deep thirst for contact, intimacy, safety, vulnerability, and love. It is here in our healing journey we must encounter the Lord and face our brokenness, for of Him it is written:
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.
— Isaiah 61:1
Brethren, we are the brokenhearted, the captive, and the bound. We sit in prisons of our own making, and must engage our stories to encounter the Lord in those places.
So what does facing our brokenness entail? What does spiritual death look and feel like? How do we encounter our brokenness in order to invite the Lord in so that we may become as ones fully alive?
Let us journey together into our brokenness such that we may come to know the fruits of our old life of sin and darkness, and in so doing, come to recognize the fruit of the Spirit with which the Lord desperately desires to bless us. We shall know the fruits of the Spirit as: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things” (Galatians 5:22-23).
You are not alone:
Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.
— Matthew 28:20
Facing your brokenness
Of temptation and darkness the Desert Fathers tell us that, “though the demons are careful to send thoughts to you, they do not force you to accept them. It is up to you to receive or reject them.” Thus, we must reject whatever fear we are experiencing and ask the Lord’s mercy in it. We must request He reveal to us our brokenness and we must seek to encounter Him within it.
Meditation and Journaling
We recommend the following text as a meditation with which to explore your own story. Enter into a period of silence, preferably before the most Blessed Sacrament, and ask the Lord to show you the places where darkness and sin have entered your heart. Journal anything He calls to mind in you, and let Him speak to you as you sit in darkness as though one in the Tomb. Fear not for you seek to become fully alive!
My one companion is darkness
— Psalm 88:18
Violence begets violence and one’s heart is not opened by exposure to it. Rather, thick and tall and otherwise airtight, impenetrable defenses are mounted that can even close us off to ourselves. I have done this when previous attempts at vulnerability were hijacked and used against my heart to incur additional damage.
And so the heart and mind are not beautiful pastures in which to rest and seek solace but a battlefield littered with the corpses of the dead: innocence, prudence, patience, value, intimacy, vulnerability, and serenity.
These corpses rot with time, making impossible mere human efforts to revive them. The stench of their decay reaches the depths of the innermost citadel, whose imprisoned body—the soul—desperately cries out for peace. But the dying and desolate wasteland before the soul drowns out the soul’s cries, and the stench of decay makes the way to the soul impossible.
Death begets death, no one can get in or out. News brings no end to the affliction, nor does it lessen, resurrect, or otherwise offer reprieve from the death.
There is comfort in knowing there is One Source of Hope that remains capable of reaching the soul amidst this siege. But the way cannot be successful unless the defenses are lowered and the path made clear. To do so is most difficult for the defenders, who remember well the death that surrounds it and the violence against its walls.
The corpses and death of the animated decay remain wholly in sight, haunting the soul by their wailing and gnashing and grinding of teeth, most prominently by the decaying and burnt flesh that inflames the nostrils and inhibits any fresh breath from being drawn.
This field of death is of our own making – the result of violence done by Man to himself when he does not know or turns his back on God.
There is no escape of our own making, as death begets death begets death.
How do we turn to our Savior and truly believe that He can bring New Life from this decay?
Who can bring life to the decaying flesh and renew the corpses littering the battlefield of our Soul?
How do we lower our defenses to let in the messenger of such tidings, let alone allow our ramparts to be toppled so that the Savior can enter the Keep?
There are plotters within who do not wish for the defenses to fall. They vigilantly assault any who even think of such rescue, for they were born amidst the battle and know no other way. Everyone inside is sick, and the stench of death infects our core. Corpses decay within the walls, but we run out of soil in which to bury them. Their numbers grow and desperation spreads like the stench of death through the remaining bastion of the soul.
Will death reign here?
There is nowhere the darkness does not reach and infect. We have lived in it so long we no longer know light.
Is there yet hope?
There must be. We are weary and broken. The odor of death clings to our tattered clothes and swirls about our remaining drink. Cries of the dead haunt us yet we are powerless to help, for we cannot even save ourselves nor remove our fixed gaze from the horrific decay of flesh before us. We must open the gates for to remain is surely Death like no other. There is no other way.
Who can save us?
How can we begin to believe we can be saved?
We are numb. There is no day or night. Only darkness. Life within the fortress is decaying and cannot subsist.
Death or Life?
Please grant us life!
It is I; do not be afraid
— John 6:20
Nourished for our healing by your Sacraments, O Lord, may we escape every snare of the enemy unharmed, just as by your grace Saint Anthony won glorious victories over the powers of darkness.
Through Christ our Lord.
— Communion Antiphon from the Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot
Peace from Cor ad Cor.