God’s presence is not the same as the feeling of God’s presence

[soso]

Today's Reading

TO MARY MARGARET McCASLIN: On how, after weathering a bereavement, one feels abandoned by God; on how God works on our behalf even when we feel () He is inactive; and on the necessity of continuing to use the ordinary means of the spiritual life during times of extraordinary need.

2 August 1954

Thank you for your letter of the July 25th. I will certainly put you /in my prayers. I can well believe that you were divinely supported /at the time of your terrible calamity. People often are. It is afterwards, when the new and bleaker life is beginning to be a routine, that one often feels () one has been left rather unaided. I am sure () one is not really so. God’s presence is not the same as the feeling of God’s presence and He may be doing most for us /when we think () He is doing least.

* People often are (divinely supported /at the time of their terrible calamity).

* one has been left rather unaided.=> God has left one rather unaided.

* one = a person

Loneliness, I am pretty sure, is one of the ways //by which we can grow spiritually.

Until we are lonely we may easily think () we have got further than we really have in Christian love;

our (natural and innocent, but merely natural, not heavenly) pleasure in being loved

—in being, as you say, an object of interest to someone—

can be mistaken /for progress in love itself, the outgoing active love //which is concerned with giving, not receiving.

It is this latter //which is the beginning of sanctity.

* in being loved ; 사랑받는 상태

* in being 에서 being 은 명사; 존재/사람 the nature or essence of a person.

But of course you know all this: alas, so much easier to know in theory /than to submit to day by day /in practice!

Be very regular in your prayers and communions:

and don’t value special ‘guidances’ any more than what comes through ordinary Christian teaching, conscience, and prudence.

I am shocked to hear that your friends think of following me.

I wanted them to follow Christ. But they’ll get over this confusion soon, I trust.

Please accept my deepest sympathy.

* get over; overcome (a difficulty).

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.