The Church has never taught that the saints floated above ordinary weather. They slept. They wept. They wondered whether God had gone out of the room.
Jane Frances de Chantal, after her husband’s death, said that if God had not taken pity she would have perished in the storm. Francis de Sales, as a young student, thought he was already lost and prayed the Memorare until the fear fell away. Teresa of Avila spent nearly twenty years with no joy in God and no pleasure in the world. Thérèse of Lisieux walked through a fog in which heaven sounded like a story she could no longer quite believe. Ignatius taught the Church not to make life decisions in that weather. John of the Cross wrote of night from a locked room in Toledo.
This little book is not a medical manual. It does not pretend that holiness requires a cheerful face. It sits beside anyone who thinks they are the only Christian who cannot feel God, and says: some of the statues, if they could speak, would tell you to sit down. They know that chair.
A Silent Homilies booklet. Written to be read in one or two sittings.