Ignatius expects— and experience confirms— that all who love and seek the Lord will undergo times of spiritual desolation: times when they do not sense God’s closeness and when they feel discouraged, without energy for prayer or service to others. Such desolation, he tells us, is a common tactic of our spiritual enemy. God in his love permits this, Ignatius says, because we grow through resisting such desolation. If we learn, therefore, to be aware of this discouraging tactic of the enemy, to understand it, and to reject it, we are set free to love and serve the Lord. The goal of Ignatius’s rules is to foster such freedom.

5 In his sixth rule, Ignatius counsels the person in desolation to “insist more upon prayer and meditation.” 6 In the discouragement of desolation, we feel a disinclination to pray. Not only, Ignatius says, should we resist the temptation to abandon prayer, but we must “insist” upon prayer and meditation even more in times of desolation. Gradually, I discovered that the Liturgy of the Hours helped me do this.

THE INSTRUCTION TOLD ME that the Liturgy of the Hours is primarily a prayer of praise. As mentioned, this was new for me. I had seldom thought of praising God and did not understand why this was so important, even the central focus of the Hours. Praise, I thought, was a form of prayer privileged by some and associated with expressive gestures and gospel music. Charismatics praised God. Praise and worship music praised God. In Hispanic ministry, I had encountered warm and compelling prayers of praise. I respected and liked such prayer; but it was not my habitual form of prayer. As I reflected, I realized that I had always centered my prayer of the Hours on two things: meditation on the content of the psalms and readings and petition for various needs. I had never thought of the Liturgy of the Hours as a prayer of praise.

Now I saw that praise situates us in our truth as creatures before our Creator and as those redeemed before our Redeemer. I never doubted that I was God’s creature and that Christ had redeemed me. My awareness of this, however, would often fade in the busyness of the day. I could easily lose sight of God and of who I am before him.