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One of the most common experiences today in life’s journey is that of abandonment. The number of young men and women I’ve met through the years in Madonna House who struggle with this is past counting.

Abandonment by father, abandonment by mother, by friends, by spouse, by one’s children, by coworkers, by neighbors, by the Church, by God.

It consists of an awful feeling of emptiness and being lost, with a key person or persons in one’s life unavailable to share in or to help mitigate the experience.

For those who grew up without a parent, the experience is of an abyss existing within oneself, an abyss that lacks all resources to face, let alone resolve, life’s challenges. One wants to hide from life, run away.

Or again, there can be a terrible anger at the futility and terrors plaguing one’s life. Ultimately, God may be held to blame for permitting or even fomenting the situation in the first place.

In Scripture it says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31), but perhaps it is even more fearful to feel like one is falling into a hell of nothingness with no one to whom one can call for help.

As you can imagine, spending time with a community like Madonna House—where there is an array of father figures, mother figures, aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, brothers, and sisters, and with God mentioned constantly day and night—really can stir up abandonment issues.

The mother, father, sibling, etc. you always longed for, well, someone very much like that person just walked into the dining room for lunch. Having a spiritual director or elder with whom you can speak in depth about what is happening also contributes to the mix, and if you have an issue of this kind (or any other, of course), it will soon come forward.

Slowly, sometimes very slowly, trust grows. Painful experiences long held in lonely solitude are shared and heard with genuine sympathy. You begin to see and to believe that not only are you no longer alone, but that you are, far and away, not the only one to have this difficulty.

In one way or another, our whole society is affected by it. We live in a time when, due to lack of faith or rebellion against God, life in general can seem largely devoid of the presence of the living God.

(You can see as I write this how easily I go from a sense of human abandonment to that of God’s absence, for the two are intimately related.)

It is as if we have been left to our own devices, and these are proving woefully inadequate to satisfy the thirst for the absolute that we all carry, recognized or denied.

When the sense of a faithful God diminishes, so does loyalty to one another; I’ve got too many problems of my own, we say, to think about carrying someone else’s. Without the support of God, someone else’s longing for support and companionship can indeed be too much:

“I have an absolute thirst to know for certain that I am loved: can you help fill the void? Here it is…catch! I feel so much lighter now! Thanks! Can we talk again tomorrow? What about this evening?”

One Old Testament figure who represents being abandoned by God is Job—that is, when he’s not feeling directly afflicted by the One he had always thought of as the most faithful of friends.

Now his cry of distress goes unheard, his pathetic threats unheeded. All he gets are three human friends, (and a fourth budding young theologian later on), who try to get Job to admit his sin so that a just God will stop punishing him.

For some 35 chapters, one soliloquy follows another, in a stunning poetic exercise in non-communication. Finally, in chapter 38 God does respond, seemingly berating Job for his ignorance about the deep mysteries of life. But suddenly we are told there is more going on at this point than what is being said:

Then Job answered the Lord and said, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be hindered. I have dealt with great things that I do not understand, things too wonderful for me which I cannot know. I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore, I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:1-6).

Through his persevering and fire-tried faith, Job’s cry is finally heard, not only by words, but by his in some way being allowed to “see God.”

What sort of vision did Job have? Just what was it about this experience that convinced Job that his questions were no longer relevant, that in fact, they needed to be repented of forever?

The text is silent about all this. But whatever he saw, Job certainly seems to have felt restored to his status as friend and servant of God. Communion with the Lord had overcome all feelings of abandonment and injustice.

We, too, must learn to pray as Job did, never giving up and at the same time being open to something absolutely new about God, if not about him in himself, at least new to our understanding. But what that will be, God alone knows.

We can only be sure that, as for Job, that “answer” will be tailored to my need, to your need, to my cry to him, and to your cry. Yet this will not mean adjusted to my ideas of how things should be or to your ideas. These can never reach the divine dimensions of the mysteries of God.

No! Rather, what God reveals of himself raises us to a higher, a greater understanding and existence, and this, as sheer grace, sheer gift.

The best “help” we can offer a brother or sister who is suffering in this way is to be present in compassionate friendship.

But forget the easy explanations and the pious exhortations which cost us little and which are at the least a burden to others and an unintended insult.

Perhaps we have to admit at some point that as “helpers,” it is we who are seeking explanations to alleviate our discomfort at God’s inexplicable ways.

Worst of all are some so-called “words from the Lord” for those we are concerned about: “The Lord told me this pain is for your purification.” If the Lord does give a word, it builds up the person and doesn’t leave a residue of guilt and shame.

Finally, some who have struggled for years with abandonment issues, despite many inroads of grace, continue to carry a residue of anger year after year. It is a mystery to me as to why this is sometimes so, but it is.

I guess that, like with the Book of Job, all the chapters have to be written before the story is complete. What we pray for, in a world where this issue only promises to become more deeply entrenched and widespread, is that grace of insight and repentance that alone can lead to peace and transformation:

And I will live for the Lord; my descendants will serve you. The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought (Psalm 22: 31-32).

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