I have one brief thing to say about our new Holy Father, Pope Francis.  His fellow Jesuits in Argentina don’t like him.  And that is the best sign we’ve had yet that this man is holy and devout!  The Jesuits have gone badly off the rails, and the corruption of the best is the worst.  Since the Jesuits were at one time the best of the best, their corruption has produced, in most cases, the worst of the worst.  But maybe that will change.  The young Jesuits in formation show much promise, and now a Jesuit pope might make a difference, the kind of difference most current Jesuits are very much opposed to.

Plus he takes public transportation, loves the poor, and defends marriage.  He walks the walk.  What a blessing he is! 

***

But I wanted to post about something that I’ve experienced many times, and that I suspect some of my readers go through as well.

And that is “coming down”.

After every intense spiritual experience I’ve had – whether that experience came at a visit to EWTN, a Chesterton Conference, a Theater of the Word tour – I’ve always had a hard time “coming down”.  There is a decompression that you have to go through when leaving the mountain top.  It usually takes several days, and it always seems to involve the following …

  • Doubting the reality or validity of the experience.

 

  • Physical exhaustion.

 

  • Doubting your own integrity.

 

  • Mild depression or the desire to eat and sleep, or to do anything other than work.

 

  • Cyncism and foul temper

Remember that when the apostles came down the mountain after the Transfiguration of Our Lord, they came down to His suffering and death – a real “come down” to say the least!

But then there followed the most unexpected experience of all, the world’s greatest mountain top vista- Easter Morning.

The Transfigutation prepared Peter, James and John for both – both the passion and the resurrection.  It revealed the truth about Christ, a truth that they were bound to have doubted when He lay dead and bloody in the tomb; a truth they only began to process, to understand, to assimilate – after He rose in a shining and glorified body from that same tomb.

***

If you’re “coming down” from anything right now, my biggest advice would be, go ahead and doubt, but doubt the doubt.   Doubt the temptation to doubt – the temptation to judge the great grace you’ve been given as worthless or illusory.  Doubt the nasty belittling voice in your ear.  Doubt not your own sinfulness (which is always there), but doubt the suggestion that your sinfulness makes the grace you’ve received worthless. 

Those are all lies you’re hearing. 

The mountain top is nearer to God.  His love is greater than we can ever imagine, and we see only reflections of it in our friends, our lovers, our soul mates – in even the most joyful moments here in the valley or there on top.

So don’t doubt; or if you must, doubt the doubt. 

And pray for the man who has just been chosen to stay near the mountain and lead us.