Dark Night of the Soul

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, March 29th, 2026:
Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord

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Psalm 22

R. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; “Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver; let him rescue the one in whom he delights!” 

R. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

For dogs are all around me; a company of evildoers encircles me. My hands and feet have shrivelled; I can count all my bones. 

R. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

They divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots. But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid! 

R. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! 

R. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

Saint Mother Teresa wrote in profound ways about her experience with what she called the “dark night of the soul” – a period of time where she felt completely abandoned by God. Her every waking hour was committed to God, through her prayer time and through serving Him in the poorest and weakest among us. Yet for many years, this work bore no personal fruit for her. She struggled with fame and feared she was drawing people to herself rather than Jesus, but the more she pulled away from the cameras, the more they were drawn to her. When she lived, people thought of her as someone very close to God, but she felt very far from Him. I imagine it must have been something of a comfort to know that Jesus felt the same way. Both Saint Matthew and Saint Mark record Jesus as crying out the refrain of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

There are theological disputes about the meaning of this – some scholars argue that Jesus was citing Psalm 22 as a reference to its end, which closes in a faithful praise of God. But I tend to agree with those scholars who believe it was sincerely said, and reflected the emotions of Jesus as He experienced the agony of the Cross. I find that very reassuring, though heartbreaking, because if Jesus was without sin and He felt forsaken, then there is no sin in my own experiences of feeling unseen by God. 

These feelings are real, and like both Jesus and Saint Mother Teresa, we should have no fear in expressing them – and yet I so often do. I’ve struggled with infertility for many years now, and it has often left me feeling like God is far away or like He isn’t hearing my prayers. Surely if He heard them, He would heal me? Or at least reassure me? Instead, it feels sometimes like my prayers fall on deaf ears. And then those feelings come with a double dose of shame – shame that I can’t trust in God’s goodness, and shame rooted in a fear that my prayers are ignored because God thinks less of me than of others whose prayers get answered. 

The irony is that the only times I’ve ever been able to get through these dark nights is by expressing my feelings, the thing I’m so scared to do, and then (like Saint Mother Teresa) continuing to trust God as an action, even when the feelings aren’t there. I know this brings me healing and peace, but that doesn’t make it any easier to be brave enough to voice my fears and to practise faith – trusting God in my heart even when my mind is scrambled and lost. 

The truth is that I am not forsaken. God is with us in the easy times and the hard, whether we feel it or not, whether His voice is loud or whisper-quiet. Pain can get so loud that it drowns Him out for us, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been forsaken. It simply means we need to tell God how we feel, trusting He’s big enough to have compassion when we are angry with Him. 

Some dark nights get very long, but there will always be a dawn.




Jenna Young

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