Our Soul Longs to Rest With God
“My soul, be at rest in God alone, from whom comes my hope” (Psalm 62:6).
Our souls are never at peace unless they are resting in God. We are always hungry to return to God, because God made us. We long to return to God’s loving Presence, because we want to experience God’s radiant love and feel His trusting gaze.
In our life on earth, our soul often feels separated from the love of God due to our lack of attention to our need for spiritual unity with our Creator. It is so easy to lose hope in God’s plan of salvation, and we carry on as if our soul were an invisible entity—or, worse, inconsequential or nonexistent.
Experiencing God’s Presence
In the book The Practice of the Presence of God, Nicholas Herman, also known as Brother Lawrence, explains the usefulness of seeing God’s presence in our everyday life by taking time for contemplation and prayer. He explains that first, the soul receives grace that helps it become more alive and more active, which also helps us resist temptation and exercise faith more readily. Second, our hope in God is strengthened, and our spiritual awareness helps us discern the deep secrets of God. Third, because the soul is bathed by the holiness of God, we cannot live apart from God, and we seek continual communion with His holiness. Finally, as the soul spends its existence in God’s divine presence, we exude “continual acts of love, adoration, contrition, confidence, thanksgiving, offering, beseeching, and all other excellent virtues.”
Brother Lawrence explains that the soul longs to be in continual conversation with God through our prayer life. It may seem difficult—even nearly impossible—when we are business owners, entrepreneurs, or leaders—and also, perhaps, mothers. We live and work in the world; we are not kneeling in a monastery or a retreat center. Allowing our soul to experience continual connection with God may seem impossible, but in reality, it is made possible through our dedication and desire for spiritual communion with Him.
Contemplation Assists the Active Life
In The Soul of the Apostolate, Dom Chautard, O.C.S.O., explains that the depth we seek comes from spiritual communion with God, which we practice during contemplation, or time alone with God. It is more important, he writes, for the soul to develop a life of contemplation than it is for the body to be active. After all, the soul’s prayer life informs the body’s active life.
Time spent in prayer and contemplation is not insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant. Rather, it is essential in order for our active life to have meaning and purpose. The depth and direction the body’s active life takes is the result of the quality of the soul’s contemplative life. The graces prayer instills are distributed in the active life through interactions with others.
Dom Chautard continues, “In the soul of a saint, action and contemplation merge together in perfect harmony to give perfect unity to his [or her] life.” Our actions have a holier effect if we have spent time with God. The soul yearns for this time, and if we do not afford this essential, our active life will be thwarted and diminished to the degree that our soul is left thirsting for God.
Think of the times you have been physically parched and all you needed was a drink of icy, cold water. Nothing else would have quenched your thirst. It is like this with the soul: Its thirst is only satisfied by contemplation and quiet prayer time with God, especially during adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Making a commitment to spend an hour each week in the Adoration Chapel will provide the soul with this precious gift to rest and reconnect in quiet and peace with God.
With our busy, likely overly-committed schedules, we may wonder how we can find an hour each week to sit with our Lord. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament can feel like we are doing nothing, but here, the soul is at rest and reconnecting with God. Then, the actions we take later will be more likely to be in perfect harmony with God and His Will for us. Following our hour spent with the Lord, we have a better understanding of what God wants us to do, to say, and to become.
Kate Walsh-Soucheray is a wife of 42 years, a mother of three adult, married children, and grandmother of six beautiful, active grandchildren. She is a former Catholic high school Religion teacher and a former Christian Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. Walsh-Soucheray writes a monthly column for the Catholic Spirit, the Archdiocesan newspaper of Minneapolis and St. Paul, called Simple Holiness. She is now retired and writes and speaks for Catholic women’s groups, Cana Dinners, and leads retreats for Catholic groups about integrating holiness into our everyday lives. Find her daily reflection and encouragement for Catholic women on LinkedIn.