The Divine Mood Ring: A Catholic Guide to Consolation and Desolation
Let me tell you something about the spiritual life that nobody mentions in the glossy parish brochures: it’s weird. Really weird. One minute you’re floating three feet off the ground during Eucharistic adoration, tears streaming down your face as you experience what can only be described as the warm embrace of the Almighty. The next minute, you’re face-down on your kitchen floor at 2 AM, eating cereal directly from the box and wondering if God has blocked your number.
Welcome to the wild world of consolation and desolation, friends. .
What Even Are These Things?
Before we dive into the theological deep end, let’s get our terms straight. Consolation and desolation aren’t just fancy Catholic words for “happy” and “sad.” If they were, this would be a very short blog post, and I’d be out of a job.
Consolation is that state where your soul feels like it’s doing the tango with the Trinity. Everything makes sense. Prayer is easy. You’d cheerfully give away all your possessions to the poor (though maybe wait until the feeling passes before you actually list your car on Craigslist). You look at a tree and weep at God’s creativity. You’re basically Snow White, and the birds are helping you get dressed in the morning.
Desolation, on the other hand, is when your soul feels like it’s trudging through spiritual molasses in lead boots. Prayer feels like talking to your ceiling. The Bible reads like stereo instructions translated from Korean to English via Google Translate. You couldn’t muster up a warm fuzzy feeling about God if someone paid you. You look at that same tree and think, “Yeah, okay, it’s a tree. So what?”
Now here’s where it gets interesting, and why we need the big guns like Ignatius, Boethius, and John of the Cross to help us out.
Saint Ignatius: The OG Spiritual Emotions Coach
Ignatius of Loyola knew a thing or two about emotional chaos. The man went from being a vain soldier obsessed with glory and the ladies to founding the Jesuits, which is quite the career pivot. Somewhere between getting his leg shattered by a cannonball and reading the only books available during his recovery (lives of the saints—talk about a captive audience), Ignatius became basically the world’s first spiritual emotions detective.
His magnum opus, the Spiritual Exercises, contains what we now call the “Rules for the Discernment of Spirits.” This sounds very official and mystical, but it’s really just Ignatius saying, “Okay, folks, here’s how to tell if that warm fuzzy feeling is from God or from that third cup of coffee.”
Ignatius noticed something fascinating: consolation and desolation don’t work the same way for everyone. For people generally trying to follow God (he calls them “those progressing from good to better,” which is a much nicer way of saying “people who aren’t total disasters”), the evil spirit works by causing desolation. The enemy wants to make you feel abandoned, discouraged, and hopeless. Meanwhile, the good spirit brings consolation—courage, strength, inspirations, and peace.
But here’s the kicker: for people living in serious sin (Ignatius delicately calls them “those going from bad to worse”), it’s the exact opposite. The evil spirit gives them consolation, making sin seem totally fine and not a big deal. “Go ahead, have that affair! You deserve happiness! YOLO!” Meanwhile, the good spirit causes desolation—that nagging feeling that maybe, just maybe, they’re making terrible life choices.
This is brilliant because it means you can’t just follow your feelings. Sometimes feeling terrible is actually a good sign that you’re on the right track and God is trying to wake you up. And sometimes feeling amazing means you’re being spiritually catfished by the devil, who is apparently quite good at Photoshop.
Ignatius’s Rules for Desolation (What To Do When God Seems to Have Left You on Read)
Ignatius gives us three crucial rules for when we’re in desolation, and they’re so good they should be tattooed on every Catholic’s forearm:
Rule #1: Never make changes during desolation. This is huge. When you’re in desolation, you will be absolutely convinced that you should quit your prayer routine, leave your vocation, move to Tahiti, or at minimum, stop going to daily Mass. Ignatius says: DON’T. That’s the desolation talking. It’s like grocery shopping when you’re hungry—you’re going to make terrible decisions. Instead, double down on your commitments. Pray more, not less. This is basically spiritual spite, and I’m here for it.
Rule #2: Remember that consolation will return. Desolation is temporary. It feels eternal, like a bad meeting that somehow lasts three weeks, but it’s not. God hasn’t abandoned you; He’s just letting you build some spiritual muscle. This too shall pass, as they say, though when you’re in it, you’re pretty sure “they” were liars.
Rule #3: Fight back. Desolation is not a time to curl up in a ball and wait for it to pass (though we’ve all been there). Ignatius says to intensify your prayer, meditation, and examination of conscience. Add something extra. If you normally pray ten minutes, pray fifteen. Desolation is a bully, and Ignatius basically says to punch it in its stupid face.
Boethius: Finding Consolation in a Prison Cell (Peak Catholic Energy)
Now let’s time-travel back about a thousand years before Ignatius to meet Boethius, a Roman philosopher who was having, let’s say, a bad day. Actually, a bad year. He was in prison, awaiting execution for crimes he didn’t commit (treason, if you’re keeping score at home). This is desolation with a capital D—we’re talking about literal, physical isolation and the certain knowledge that he’s going to die.
What does Boethius do? Does he despair? Does he write angry screeds about the injustice of it all? Does he spend his time making shivs and planning an escape?
No. This absolute madlad writes The Consolation of Philosophy, one of the most influential books in Western thought. In it, Lady Philosophy herself appears to Boethius and basically gives him the most epic pep talk in history.
The central insight of The Consolation is this: true happiness can’t depend on external circumstances, because external circumstances are, by definition, changeable. Fortune is a wheel that spins (Boethius basically invented the “Wheel of Fortune” concept, though I doubt he imagined it would one day involve Vanna White). One day you’re up, the next you’re down. If your happiness depends on being up, you’re setting yourself up for misery.
Real consolation, Boethius argues, comes from recognizing that true happiness lies in the eternal and unchangeable—in God Himself. Everything else is just window dressing. Your job, your health, your reputation, even your life—these are all temporary goods. They can bring you joy, but they can’t bring you ultimate fulfillment.
This is hardcore stuff coming from a guy literally writing from death row. Boethius is in the ultimate desolation—facing death, separated from his family, his reputation destroyed—and he’s writing about how none of that can touch his real happiness. That’s not toxic positivity; that’s genuine Christian hope on steroids.
The humor here, dark as it is, is that Boethius is more free in his prison cell than most of us are in our comfortable lives. We’re prisoners to our circumstances, constantly at the mercy of the spinning wheel. He’s figured out how to step off the wheel entirely.
The Fortune Cookie Wisdom That Actually Works
Lady Philosophy tells Boethius something that sounds like it came from a fortune cookie but is actually profound: you can never lose what is truly yours. Your possessions? Not really yours—Fortune was just letting you borrow them. Your reputation? That was always in other people’s fickle hands. Your very life? On loan from God.
But your will, your ability to choose the good, your orientation toward God—that’s actually yours, and nothing can take it away unless you give it up.
This completely reframes consolation and desolation. Consolation isn’t about feeling good; it’s about recognizing what’s real. Desolation isn’t about feeling bad; it’s about being confused about what’s real. When we’re in desolation, we think the temporary things matter more than they do. When we’re in consolation, we see clearly that only one thing is necessary, and, you may be blindsided here, it’s God.
John of the Cross: Because You Thought This Was Going to Get Easier
Just when you think you’ve got this consolation and desolation thing figured out, along comes John of the Cross to absolutely wreck your understanding of the spiritual life. John is the spiritual equivalent of a CrossFit instructor—just when you think you’ve reached your limit, he shows you that you haven’t even started.
John wrote about the “Dark Night of the Soul,” which is basically desolation’s final boss form. But here’s where things get wonderfully weird: John says that the dark night is actually a gift. It’s God purifying the soul in a way that feels absolutely terrible but is actually super good for you. It’s like spiritual chemotherapy—it feels like it’s killing you, but it’s actually killing the things in you that are keeping you from fully living.
John distinguishes between two types of dark nights: the dark night of the senses and the dark night of the spirit. Because apparently one dark night wasn’t enough. God is nothing if not thorough.
The Dark Night of the Senses (When Prayer Becomes Boring)
The first dark night happens to people who’ve been cruising along in the spiritual life, enjoying all sorts of consolations. Prayer feels great! Mass is beautiful! They can’t get enough of spiritual reading! They’re doing all the right things, but they’re doing them because they feel good.
Then one day, God pulls the plug on all that. Suddenly, prayer is dry. Mass is tedious. Spiritual reading might as well be a phone book. (Do phone books still exist? Let’s say it’s like reading Terms and Conditions.) All the emotional rewards disappear.
Most people, when this happens, assume they’re doing something wrong. They’ve lost their way! God is mad at them! They need to try a new prayer method! Maybe they should take up contemplative basket weaving!
But John says: Nope. This is actually God inviting you to a deeper level. All those warm fuzzies were training wheels, and now God is taking them off. The invitation is to love God not because it feels good, but because He’s good. To pray not because you get something out of it, but because prayer is communion with God whether you feel it or not.
This is simultaneously the most frustrating and the most liberating thing you’ll ever hear. Frustrating because, let’s be honest, the warm fuzzies were nice. Liberating because it means your relationship with God doesn’t depend on your emotional state, which, if you’re anything like me, changes more often than the weather in England.
The Dark Night of the Spirit (God’s Advanced Placement Course)
If you thought the dark night of the senses was rough, buckle up, because John has another level for us. The dark night of the spirit is when God starts working on the deep, deep issues—the subtle pride, the hidden self-reliance, the ways we’ve made even our spiritual life about ourselves.
In this night, everything feels wrong. Not just prayer, but your whole understanding of God and yourself. You might feel completely abandoned, convinced that you’re headed straight to hell, certain that you’ve committed the unforgivable sin (even though you probably haven’t even committed a mildly forgivable sin recently). It’s like spiritual vertigo.
John says this is God secretly communicating Himself to the soul in a way that’s so far beyond our normal capacity to receive Him that it feels like darkness. We’re like someone trying to look directly at the sun—it’s too bright, so we experience it as blindness. God is so present that He feels absent.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “This sounds absolutely terrible. Why would God do this?” And John would say: Because He loves you too much to leave you as you are. He wants to transform you completely, to burn away everything that’s not oriented toward Him, to make you capable of union with Him. And that requires serious surgery.
The dark night is God’s way of weaning us off spiritual milk and onto solid food. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also the only way to grow up.
John’s Advice (Which Is Both Comforting and Terrifying)
When you’re in the dark night, John’s advice is simple: Don’t. Do. Anything.
Well, that’s not entirely fair. He says to remain in “loving attentiveness to God” without trying to generate thoughts or feelings. Just be there. Like sitting with a friend in companionable silence, except the friend is invisible and you’re not sure He’s even in the room.
This is the prayer of naked faith. No props, no feelings, no insights, no consolations. Just you and God, and most of the time you’re not even sure about the God part. It’s terrifying and beautiful at the same time.
John promises that on the other side of this night is a dawn more glorious than anything you can imagine. The soul will be transformed, capable of genuine union with God. But you have to go through the night to get there. There are no shortcuts, no cheat codes, no skipping to the end.
Putting It All Together: The Catholic Cocktail of Consolation and Desolation
So what do we do with all this wisdom from Ignatius, Boethius, and John of the Cross? How do we actually live with consolation and desolation in a way that doesn’t make us crazy?
First: Recognize Where You Are
Are you in consolation? Great! Enjoy it, but don’t cling to it. Don’t make your spiritual life dependent on feelings. Use the energy and joy to build good habits, deepen your commitment, and prepare for the inevitable downturn. It’s like packing a lunch before a hike—future you will thank you.
Are you in desolation? First, figure out what kind. Are you in desolation because you’re living in serious sin? If so, the solution is obvious: stop sinning. Repent. Go to confession. Get your life right with God. The desolation is a gift trying to wake you up.
Are you in desolation even though you’re trying to live well? Then you’re in one of Ignatius’s trials or possibly one of John’s dark nights. This is an invitation to deeper faith. Don’t panic. Don’t make big changes. Hold steady. Increase your prayer. Trust that this is part of the process.
Second: Don’t Trust Your Feelings (But Don’t Ignore Them Either)
This is the tricky balance. Your feelings matter—they’re part of how you’re made. God gave you emotions for a reason. But they’re not infallible guides. Sometimes you feel close to God and you are. Sometimes you feel close to God and you’re actually being deceived. Sometimes you feel far from God and you are. Sometimes you feel far from God and He’s actually closer than He’s ever been.
The key is to test everything against objective truth. What does Scripture say? What does the Church teach? What would a wise spiritual director advise? Your feelings are data points, not the whole story.
Third: Remember the Big Picture (Boethius Style)
When you’re deep in desolation, it’s easy to catastrophize. “This will last forever. God has abandoned me. I’m a spiritual failure. I should just give up.”
Boethius reminds us: zoom out. Way out. Like, cosmic perspective out. You’re experiencing a moment in time. This moment will pass. Even if this desolation lasts for years (and for some saints, it did), it’s still nothing compared to eternity. The wheel of fortune keeps spinning, but there’s a center that doesn’t spin—and that’s where God is.
This isn’t minimizing your suffering. It’s putting it in context. Your pain is real, but it’s not ultimate. God is ultimate, and He’s working all things—even the terrible, dark, confusing things—for your good.
Fourth: Trust the Process (John of the Cross Style)
If you’re in a genuine dark night, you’re in God’s advanced class. This is not punishment; it’s promotion. God doesn’t put you through the dark night because He’s mad at you. He puts you through it because He trusts you can handle it and because He wants to give you something better than you currently have.
Think of it like this: if God only gave you kindergarten-level spirituality, that would be safe and comfortable, but you’d never grow. The dark night is like spiritual graduate school. It’s hard. Really hard. But it means God believes you’re ready for deeper transformation.
John of the Cross says that in the dark night, God is doing more for the soul than the soul could ever do for itself. Even though it feels like nothing is happening—or worse, like you’re going backward—God is actually working at a level so deep you can’t perceive it. It’s like physical therapy: it hurts in the moment, but it’s making you stronger.
Fifth: Keep Showing Up (Ignatius Style)
This is perhaps the most important practical advice: when you’re in desolation, don’t quit. Don’t stop praying. Don’t skip Mass. Don’t abandon your spiritual practices. In fact, do more. Add five minutes to your prayer. Show up even when you don’t feel like it. Especially when you don’t feel like it.
This is where the rubber meets the road. Anyone can pray when it feels good. The real question is: will you pray when it feels like you’re talking to a wall? Will you go to Mass when you get nothing out of it? Will you keep reading Scripture when it seems like meaningless words on a page?
This is faith. Not the warm fuzzy feeling kind of faith, but the “I’m going to keep walking even though I can’t see the path” kind of faith. It’s gritty. It’s unglamorous. It’s the spiritual equivalent of getting up at 5 AM to go to the gym when it’s cold and dark and your bed is so comfortable. But it’s what builds real character.
Ignatius knew that the evil spirit wants nothing more than for you to quit during desolation. That’s the whole point of the attack. So by persevering, by showing up, by continuing to pray even when it seems pointless, you’re already winning. You’re saying to the enemy: “Nice try, but I’m not going anywhere.”
The Practical Stuff: A Field Guide to the Spiritual Roller Coaster
Let’s get really practical for a moment, because all this theology is great, but what do you actually DO when you’re living through these states?
When You’re in Consolation:
- Give thanks. Recognize this as a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Thank God for this time of clarity and joy.
- Build reserves. Use this time to establish good habits, memorize prayers, deepen your knowledge of the faith. You’re storing up supplies for the desert that’s coming.
- Don’t get cocky. Seriously. The minute you think “I’ve got this spiritual life thing figured out” is the minute you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Stay humble. Remember that this consolation is a gift, not something you earned.
- Make commitments carefully. Yes, you feel like you could give away everything and move to a monastery right now. But before you list your house on Zillow, maybe wait. Make sure your discernment is based on more than just good feelings.
- Help others. When you’re filled with God’s love, share it. Be generous. Be kind. Let the overflow bless others.
When You’re in Desolation:
- Don’t panic. This is normal. This doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong or that God has abandoned you. It’s just where you are right now.
- Review your life. Sometimes desolation is a wake-up call. Have you been neglecting prayer? Living in sin? Making poor choices? If so, fix those things. But if you can’t identify any serious issues, then…
- Hold steady. Remember Ignatius’s first rule: make no changes. Keep doing what you were doing. Don’t quit. Don’t pivot. Just keep walking.
- Add something small. Five more minutes of prayer. An extra rosary. A daily examen. Something to show you’re committed to the fight.
- Reach out. Talk to a spiritual director, a trusted priest, a wise friend. Don’t isolate yourself. The enemy loves isolation.
- Remember past consolations. Ignatius suggests this specifically. Think back to times when you felt close to God. Remember that those were real, even though you can’t feel them now.
- Be patient with yourself. You’re not a spiritual failure. You’re human. You’re going through something hard. Give yourself the same compassion you’d give a friend.
- Keep short accounts with God. Go to confession regularly. Even if you don’t feel anything, the sacrament is still working. Grace doesn’t depend on your feelings.
The Twist: Sometimes Desolation Is Better Than Consolation
Here’s something that will blow your mind: sometimes spiritual desolation is actually more beneficial for your soul than consolation. I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But hear me out.
When you’re in consolation, there’s always a subtle temptation to spiritual pride. “Look how holy I am! Look how much I love God! I’m really getting somewhere!” Even if you don’t consciously think these things, there’s a danger of finding your identity in your spiritual experiences rather than in God Himself.
Desolation strips all that away. When prayer is dry and Mass is boring and you can barely drag yourself to open your Bible, you can’t fool yourself into thinking you’re special. You’re just a beggar standing before God with empty hands. And that’s exactly where God wants you.
Desolation teaches humility in a way consolation never can. It teaches pure faith—faith that doesn’t depend on feelings or experiences or anything except God’s word. It teaches you that you’re not in control, that you can’t manufacture your own spiritual experiences, that you’re completely dependent on God’s grace.
Plus, and this is key, when you pray in desolation, your prayer is actually more meritorious. Think about it: when prayer feels great, it’s easy to pray. You’d do it anyway because you enjoy it. But when prayer feels terrible and you do it anyway? That’s love. That’s sacrifice. That’s the widow giving her last two coins. God sees that and honors it.
The saints who experienced long periods of desolation—Mother Teresa’s famous dark night lasted decades—often ended up closer to God and more fruitful in their ministry than those who coasted on constant consolation. The desolation purified their motives, deepened their faith, and made them more effective instruments of God’s grace.
So if you’re in desolation right now, take heart. You might actually be in the VIP section of the spiritual life. It doesn’t feel like it, but that’s kind of the point.
Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Let me share some common ways people mess this up, because we all mess it up, and it helps to know you’re not alone.
Mistake #1: Chasing Consolation
This is the spiritual equivalent of chasing a high. People hop from one prayer method to another, one retreat to another, one spiritual book to another, trying to recapture that feeling they had during their first retreat or their conversion experience. They become spiritual experience junkies.
The problem is that God isn’t a vending machine. You can’t just push the right buttons and get a mystical experience. And constantly seeking consolation actually prevents you from growing, because it means you’re making your spiritual life about feelings rather than about God.
Mistake #2: Despairing in Desolation
The flip side is people who hit desolation and immediately assume it’s all over. They conclude that they’re not cut out for the spiritual life, that God doesn’t really love them, that they should just give up and embrace a life of mediocrity.
This is exactly what the enemy wants. Desolation is a test, not a verdict. It’s an invitation to deeper faith, not evidence that you’ve failed.
Mistake #3: Ignoring the Message
Sometimes desolation is trying to tell you something. Maybe you need to change something in your life. Maybe you need to confess a sin. Maybe you need to address a relationship issue or a habit that’s separating you from God.
If you’re experiencing desolation and you have a nagging sense that something’s not right in your life, pay attention to that. Don’t just gut it out when God might be trying to get your attention.
Mistake #4: Spiritual Comparison
Oh, this one is deadly. You’re in desolation, dragging yourself to Mass and getting nothing out of it, and you look over at Sally in the pew in front of you who is clearly having a profound spiritual experience, tears streaming down her face, totally transported by the Eucharist. And you think, “What’s wrong with me?”
Stop it. Just stop it. You have no idea what Sally’s interior life is like. Maybe she’s in consolation. Maybe she’s just good at crying. Maybe she’s thinking about her dog who died and it has nothing to do with the Mass. You can’t see souls. Don’t compare your interior experience to someone else’s exterior appearance.
Mistake #5: Going It Alone
The spiritual life is not meant to be lived in isolation. If you’re struggling with persistent desolation, talk to someone. A priest, a spiritual director, a wise Catholic friend. Don’t just tough it out alone.
Pride tells us we should be able to handle everything ourselves. Wisdom knows that we need help, and that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.
The Ultimate Point: It’s All About Love
Here’s the thing that Ignatius, Boethius, and John of the Cross all understood: the whole point of consolation and desolation, the whole point of the spiritual life, the whole point of everything is love. Not feeling love—actually loving.
Consolation can help you love God, but it can also make you love the feeling of loving God more than you love God Himself. Desolation can feel like the absence of love, but it’s actually the opportunity to love God purely, without any reward, without any payoff, just because He’s God and He’s worthy of love.
Think about marriage. (Stay with me here.) When you first fall in love, everything is fireworks and butterflies and you can’t imagine ever not feeling this way. That’s consolation. Then you get married, and after a few years, the butterflies have mostly left the building. You still love your spouse, but it’s not the same intense emotional high. That’s desolation.
Now, which love is deeper? The early infatuation or the committed love that persists through years and difficulties and boring Tuesday evenings when you’re both too tired to talk and you’re watching TV together in companionable silence?
Obviously, it’s the second one. The first one is real, but it’s not mature. The second one has been tested and proven. It’s chosen love, not just felt love.
God takes us through consolation and desolation to mature our love for Him. He wants us to move from spiritual infatuation to spiritual marriage. He wants us to love Him not because He makes us feel good (though He does) but because He’s good. Not because He gives us stuff (though He does) but because He’s given us Himself.
The mystics understood this. Teresa of Avila said she’d rather have one moment of self-knowledge than hours of mystical prayer. She knew that the point wasn’t the experience; it was the transformation. John of the Cross said that in the evening of life, we’ll be judged on love. Not on how many mystical experiences we had, not on how often we felt close to God, but on how much we loved.
A Final Word of Encouragement (And Mild Panic)
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You now know more about consolation and desolation than 99% of Catholics. This is both good news and bad news.
The good news is that you’re equipped to handle whatever comes. You know that consolation is a gift to be received with gratitude. You know that desolation is a test to be endured with faith. You know that God is working in both states, even when you can’t see it.
The bad news is that knowing all this doesn’t make it easier when you’re actually going through it. Head knowledge and heart knowledge are two different things. You can understand intellectually that desolation is temporary and purposeful, and still feel absolutely miserable when you’re in it.
That’s okay. That’s human. Even the saints felt that way. Mother Teresa knew all about the spiritual life, and she still experienced her dark night as genuine darkness. John of the Cross wrote the manual on the dark night, and he still suffered through it.
The spiritual life isn’t about having all the answers or feeling great all the time. It’s about continuing to seek God, continuing to love God, continuing to trust God, whether you’re on the mountaintop or in the valley, whether the sun is shining or you’re stumbling through the dark.
Ignatius would tell you to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, making no changes in desolation but increasing your efforts. Boethius would remind you that your true happiness doesn’t depend on circumstances, that God is the only unchangeable good, that Fortune’s wheel keeps spinning but God remains constant. John of the Cross would assure you that God is doing more in the darkness than you can imagine, that the night is actually a gift, that dawn is coming even if you can’t see the first rays of light yet.
And all three of them, if they could talk to you right now, would probably say this: Don’t give up. You’re not alone. This is normal. This is how God works. Trust Him. Keep going. It’s worth it.
Because at the end of all this—at the end of all the consolations and desolations, all the mountaintops and valleys, all the light and darkness—is God Himself. And He is worth everything. Every moment of suffering, every period of dryness, every dark night of the soul. All of it is leading you to Him, and He is better than anything you can imagine.
So take heart, fellow pilgrim. Whether you’re soaring in consolation or slogging through desolation, you’re exactly where you need to be. God is with you, even when He’s hiding. He’s working in you, even when you can’t feel it. And He’s leading you home, one step at a time.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go stare at a tree and figure out if I’m experiencing consolation or if I just really like trees.
P.S. If you’re reading this during a time of desolation and none of it helped and you still feel terrible, that’s okay. Sometimes the best we can do is just keep breathing, keep showing up, and trust that God knows what He’s doing even when we don’t. And that’s enough. You’re doing better than you think.