Some years ago, I met a wonderful woman religious then in her seventies and now with the Lord. She told me that when she got into a “low”—in Ignatian terms, a time of desolation—she would turn to the Lord and say, “You’ve carried me for fifty-five years of religious life. You won’t drop me in this little thing either.” It was a perfect application of rule 6: a reflection, in time of desolation, on God’s past fidelity that strengthens the person to resist present desolation.
