Reading in Raissa's Journal again, I found a comment from Jacques which really impressed me today.
"We are more and more terribly alone." This was written in March of 1935 when the world was becoming more and more secularized, as well as the Catholics becoming more liberal. Even then, two people who were living close to God were feeling and, indeed, isolated.
Another entry from Raissa is about the Dark Night. She writes this, "The time of childish things is over, the time of playing games, of make-believe, of eloquence, of 'let's pretend'---One has at last reached the point of realizing one's ignorance, on the brink of the abyss which separates the creature from the Uncreated."
This was written in 1937.
This is my experience of not being able to imagine or plan or do anything outside of God's Providence and Divine Will. The object of the Dark Night is to cleanse one of self-will and self-love.
Raissa continues. "Then, one no longer lives on anything but the alms of unknown, inapprehensible grace.
One does feel abandon by God, but one makes acts of faith, believing that God is there, despite one's feelings.
I would like my readers to pray for this contemplative vocation to which I have been called. In order to be still, one must be in a place to be still. This has not happened, yet.
And, God calls one to be still. to wait for God seeing Him in the eternal present, not looking at the past at all. Once a person understands that God does not want one going back into the past looking at old sins, trusting in His forgiveness, it is clear that one lives in the now, only.
To be continued...