I was listening to an episode of the podcast called Pints with Aquinas, where a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal was being interviewed. This friar is also a spiritual director and he was answering a listener's question about why the fervor of conversion goes away after a while. I never actually considered that question because it seemed natural to me that fervor would fade after time. I never considered it a bad thing, merely a bit of a bummer. However, I found one part of his answer quite illuminating and useful for me.
Paraphrasing here, he said that the fervor is a gift from the Lord because it can often be helpful to overcome resistance, or overcoming sinful behavior. But it's also a gift to take it away because to glide so effortlessly based on the gift of good feelings can cause a false sense of pride that our own efforts, or God's special attention is on us and one or both of those is helping us overcome sinful behaviors, or to establish new good behaviors. Related to that, we can neglect to take Christ's hand through our life. If we never need assistance, if we never experience our spiritual poverty, then we'll never work with Christ to form a durable faith life, a relationship with him where we rely on him. We'll never learn to stick with Christ, or stick with our own lives in a Christ-like way when things get tough.
This is precisely the arc of my most recent conversion. From the moment I made the decision that I was going to go back to mass and to confession until now has been about two years and two months. At about a year and five months I really started to notice that it was more difficult to overcome sinful behaviors from my past. And at about 22 or 23 months I began experiencing some humiliating instances in my life. Instances which, even prior to hearing this podcast, had led to me understand that I don't understand enough to be doing what I'm doing as the boss of a men's ministry. Much of what I do and say is well within my competency, but the lack of confident grasp is a real problem. It makes me more defensive and less able to keep up with debates, even if I have the knowledge. But also, I have a rather superficial understanding of some things. So I know correct things, but I don't always know them well enough to explain. And that's not okay. And that's okay. It simply means I need to either get more knowledgeable, or get out of the business of doing what I'm doing.
But the latter isn't really an option. I need to be able to talk about these things, even if I'm not going to run a men's ministry. And I need guidance.