The Prayer Thread is a collection of teachings and practical prompts to help as we learn to pray in community. This text was originally delivered on October 10, 2025 as a short teaching at our online weekly prayer sit.
Each fall, as the leaves begin to drop, I remember the annual rhythm that I can observe through the Oratory window. In summer, green leaves were full and I could barely see into the forest. In winter trees will be bare with no leaves, and the nakedness of the forest reveals so much!
The cyclic rhythm makes me recall St. Ignatius’ admonition to remember desolation will come, as I am in consolation, and consolation will come, as I am in desolation. It’s a holy cycle. Consolation and desolation come, and they go.
It seems as if the same were true of God. At times God seems present and manifest, and at other times, God seems absent and mysterious. It, also, is a holy cycle in our experience of God, which Thomas Moore called alternations and Paul Tillich called oscillations. Really, God does not come or go, since God is everywhere, all the time, but it sure does seem like it at times!
If life is changing in the coming and going of consolation and desolation, and if our experience of God makes it seem like God comes and goes in oscillations, then the life of our prayer must also have its comings and goings. Words are learned and forgotten. Rituals are completed and rest quiet until handed on again. Issues and people and causes about whom we petition also come and go. Yet, as in all holy cycles, the rhythms of our prayer return. They help us face life and death. They help us recognize Absence and Presence. They help us find our way to the invisible through the visible.
May we grow in holiness as we traverse each holy cycle!
