Something shifts in the middle of life that you were not warned about. The fervor you once had—the fire, the sense that God was close, and the faith was vivid—has gone flat. And the question underneath your silence, the one you are ashamed to admit, is not "What happened to my faith?" It is "What is wrong with me?" Nothing is wrong with you. But something is forming inside you, whether you know it or not. Whether it becomes maturity or bitterness depends on decisions you are probably not aware you are making right now.
Father Ronald Rolheiser—Missionary Oblate priest, theologian, and author of Insane for the Light and Sacred Fire—returns for a third conversation that opens the map most of us are missing.
He walks through the three phases of a maturing Christian life, explains why wilderness seasons are not a malfunction but a form of purification, and addresses why the grief you keep deferring is the precise bridge to everything the second half of life is supposed to be. Underneath all of it is the one question midlife forces everyone to answer: whether you are still operating out of the pleasure principle, asking what is in it for you, or whether you have begun the long work of moving from achievement to fruitfulness.
If you are in the flat middle stretch of life, this conversation will name exactly where you are. What comes after the naming is up to you. The Lord is not asking you to feel more. He is asking you to be honest, to grieve faithfully, and to hold with both hands whatever commitments He has already placed in yours.
Guest Bio
Father Ronald Rolheiser is a Missionary Oblate priest, theologian, and the author of Insane for the Light and Sacred Fire—among nearly twenty books exploring what it means to mature in a life with God. His weekly column on spirituality reaches readers in more than seventy countries. This is his third conversation on Win Today.
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