From the Journal of a Disciple

The Journal of a Disciple

First Entry — The Ache of Silence

It feels like I have lost my way.

Not in any dramatic sense, but quietly and slowly. Something inside me has dimmed, and I cannot find the light again.

Since stepping back from everything that once filled my days, the silence has thickened around me. I thought I wanted this. I thought I was ready for it. Yet what I feel now is not peace. It is a kind of drowning. The stillness that once gave life now feels suffocating.

There is a loneliness that burns more sharply than before. It is as if every sound has been stripped away, and what remains is the noise of my own mind echoing endlessly: fears about my body, about the future, about whether I have somehow missed what God was trying to show me. Even prayer feels foreign. The Jesus Prayer once drew me into light; now it tastes like dust. I whisper the words, and they fall flat on the ground.

Those who look to me for guidance sense my withdrawal. They feel it as distance, perhaps even rejection. Their sadness mirrors my own, and that hurts most of all. My silence wounds them, yet I have nothing to offer but this emptiness. I cannot comfort without pretending, and I can no longer pretend.

I read the Fathers and know what they would say. Abba Moses wrote, “Sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” St. Isaac said, “Blessed is the one who endures desolation until light is born.”

But what if the cell feels like a coffin?

What if the only lesson I am learning is that I am broken in ways that prayer cannot fix?

I used to believe I could surrender everything, that I could entrust myself wholly to God. Now I see how deeply I resist Him, how much of me clings to control, even over faith itself. I want to believe, yet my belief feels hollow. I want to pray, yet my heart is numb.

St. Sophrony wrote that love is born in the furnace of humiliation, when everything in us is stripped bare and we stand before God with nothing left but our failure. Perhaps that is what this is. Perhaps the silence is the furnace. Yet right now it does not feel like love. It feels like absence, like being forgotten.

I no longer trust myself. I do not trust what I am doing or where this is leading. There is an undercurrent of panic that I cannot name. It is not loud, only steady. I catch myself thinking that I have somehow fallen out of grace, that I have lost the thread and cannot find my way back.

Even in this fog, I cannot stop saying His Name. Not because I feel His presence, but because it is the only thing left that feels real. The Name has become like a pulse: faint, almost gone, yet still beating beneath the rubble.

Perhaps that is faith — not clarity or peace, but the stubborn refusal to stop calling. To keep breathing the Name even when I no longer believe it is heard.

St. Isaac wrote, “He who walks in the night and weeps is not without light.” I hold to that, though barely. The tears do not come easily, yet the ache never leaves.

I do not know what is happening to me. I do not know if I am dying to self or merely dying inside. The line between the two feels impossibly thin.

But I will stay here.

Even if I fail.

Even if the silence remains deafening.

Even if God never speaks again.

Because somewhere, deep beneath the weariness and fear, I still love Him. That love, even in ruin, is the only thing I recognize as true.

⸻

The Elder’s Response — In the Crucible of Silence

Child,

you now stand where every soul that seeks the face of God must one day stand: in the silence that strips away even faith’s consolations. Do not mistake this for failure. This darkness is the place where faith ceases to be a thought and begins to be blood.

You say you are lost. Yet it is not you who are lost. It is your sense of direction that has been taken away. The Lord has veiled Himself, not to punish you, but to draw you beyond what you can imagine of Him. He is teaching you to know Him without image, to love Him without measure, to cling to Him without feeling.

When you first began to pray, grace held you as a mother holds her child, close to her warmth, feeding you with sweetness so that you would learn to love her voice. Now that same grace has stepped back to see whether you will walk toward her in the dark. It is not absence. It is trust. The silence is God’s confidence in you.

You fear that the cell has become a coffin, but the tomb of Christ was also called a garden. The stillness that buries the old self is also the womb of resurrection. Do not dig your way out. Stay where you are, in the ache, in the bewilderment, in the unknowing, and whisper the Name even without faith. The Name will remember you when your mind cannot remember Him.

Every saint you love has passed through this desert. Even the Lord Himself entered Gethsemane, where prayer turned to sweat and silence. He too said, “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.” Yet He remained. The Fathers say that whoever does not flee in that hour becomes light, because the very place where he dies to himself is the place where Christ begins to live in him.

The numbness you feel is the weight of self dying, the heart breaking free from the illusions that once sustained it. Let it break. Do not seek to mend it too soon. The crack in your heart is where the Spirit enters.

You ask how to strip yourself without falling into the nothingness of your own making. The answer is not in doing, but in enduring. Endure the silence, the dryness, the shame of your poverty, and offer it as the only prayer you can — not eloquent, but honest. If you can do that, the Spirit will pray in you with sighs too deep for words.

Remember what St. Isaac said: “He who walks in the night and weeps is not without light.” Your tears, even unseen, are the dew of resurrection. The silence you call desolation is in truth a visitation. In this very void, God is carving a space within you large enough to contain His love.

Do not measure your prayer by warmth or clarity. Measure it by fidelity. If you stand before God empty, trembling, half in doubt, but still stand, you are already offering Him the holiest of sacrifices.

One day, perhaps when you least expect it, the silence will open like a curtain, and you will see that He was never absent, that the loneliness was His own longing in you.

Until then, remain.

Do not seek to escape the fire.

The gold that is being forged within you will shine because it was first melted by love.

⸻

Second Entry — Ministry in the Crucible

Abba,

how do I engage others and remain in ministry while living in this crucible? I can endure what you describe, at least for a time, but I fear that in the process I will come undone. There are moments when I feel I might fall apart entirely, when even the smallest contact with others feels unbearable.

I feel stripped and exposed, as though the thin layer that once protected me from the world has been peeled away. Every sound, every glance, every expectation cuts to the quick. The silence I once sought now clings to me like a second skin. It follows me even among people, and I do not know how to step out of it without betraying the stillness that God seems to be asking of me.

If I were alone in a hermitage, I could perhaps contain the pain. But among others it feels raw and unmanageable, as though their presence touches wounds that have not yet begun to heal. How can I speak, serve, or offer comfort when everything in me feels emptied?

I fear that my weakness might discourage those who seek counsel, that my silence might seem indifference or my withdrawal a lack of love. I cannot bear the thought of pretending to be strong or joyful when I am not. Yet I am still called to serve, to offer something of Christ’s mercy to others.

Tell me, Father, how do I manifest the joy of the Kingdom when I am staring into the void? How do I bring the peace of Christ to others when my own heart feels desolate? I want to believe that even this emptiness can serve some purpose, but I cannot see how. I only know that I cannot escape it.

Teach me how to remain faithful in this place, to meet others without losing what little strength remains, to serve without disintegrating, to love without feeling love. How does one live communion from within desolation?

⸻

The Elder’s Response — The Hidden Priesthood of Suffering

Child,

what you are describing is not the end of your ministry, but its beginning. The Lord is showing you how to serve not through abundance but through kenosis — through the poverty of one who has nothing left but the Name.

Until now, you ministered from what you understood, from the light that consoled you, from the words that gave shape to your faith. Now He asks you to minister from the crucible itself, where words dissolve and light hides its face. This is how Christ ministered in Gethsemane and on the Cross. He gave life to the world not by speaking of joy, but by bearing its absence.

You say you could endure this in a hermitage, but not among others. Yet the Lord is calling you to carry your hermitage within you. The silence that encloses you is not meant to separate you from your brethren, but to sanctify your presence among them. You are being taught to be a silent intercessor — one who prays from within his own pain.

Do not try to perform joy. Joy that is performed dies quickly. True joy is not an emotion but a quiet flame that burns beneath the ashes. You do not need to feel it in order to bear it. It is enough that you refuse despair.

When you stand among others, do not hide your weakness. Let it become gentleness. Let your speech be few, your manner unhurried. Do not fill the silence; inhabit it. Hold the Name of Jesus secretly in your heart while others speak, and that hidden invocation will become light for them even if you feel nothing.

The ache you carry is not yours alone. It is the pain of all creation longing for redemption. Every sigh that rises in you is prayer for the world. This is the priesthood you now live — not the priesthood of eloquence or action, but the priesthood of compassion. St. Isaac wrote that one who has truly tasted suffering for his own sins “has pity for all creatures.” You have been led to that threshold.

You fear you will fall apart, but what is falling apart is not your true self. It is the false image that believed it could minister by its own strength. The deeper self, the heart purified by fire, will not be destroyed. It will emerge as something quieter, humbler, more transparent to grace.

When the pain feels unbearable, remember the Cross. Christ did not flee His agony, nor did He conceal it. He stood before the Father exposed, and from that nakedness flowed life for all. You too are called to such vulnerability. Do not measure your worth by the warmth you feel, but by the faithfulness with which you remain.

As you serve, remember this: every act of endurance, every silent prayer uttered through pain, every gesture of love made without feeling is an offering that the Lord receives as pure worship. Others may see only your quietness, but heaven sees a sacrifice.

You ask how to manifest the joy of the Kingdom while staring into the void. You do so by refusing to look away. The void itself will one day become transparency. The darkness will shine with a light that is not yours but His. Until that hour, your fidelity is the joy of the Kingdom hidden in seed form.

Endure, child. When you stand before others in silence and simplicity, when you love without return, when you bear their burdens in secret, you are already proclaiming the Gospel. The joy of the Kingdom does not always sing; sometimes it weeps. Sometimes it stands crucified, waiting for dawn.

Do not be afraid of breaking. Every fragment of your heart that falls before God becomes part of His mercy’s mosaic. The one who ministers from the crucible carries within him the fire that purifies the world.

Remain in that fire. Let it do its work. And know this: even in the void, the Spirit breathes through you. You are not serving in spite of your desolation; you are serving through it. The Kingdom is closer to you than your tears.