Persevering in faithfulness to Christ’s Church during ecclesial uncertainty

The Church, throughout her long history, has faced many terrible trials, united her in a deep and real way with the sufferings of Jesus. How can we be the saints the Church needs today, during this particular hour of testing?

A new book by Father Donald Haggerty gives a prescription for how to handle such challenging times. The Hour of Testing: Spiritual Depth and Insight in a Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty (Ignatius Press, 2025) brings Father Haggerty’s decades of experience and deep insights to bear on questions of concern for the Church. He explores the sufferings faced by the Church, and explains how our modern saints must embrace that suffering, accepting it with love the way Our Lord embraced his own cross. Are we currently in the Church’s ultimate “hour of testing”, or is that yet to come? We cannot say for sure, of course, but we can prayerfully prepare, offering ourselves and our lives for the good of the Church and the world.

Father Haggerty is the author of many works of spiritual depth, including Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation, Conversion: Spiritual Insights into an Essential Encounter with God, The Contemplative Hunger, Contemplative Provocations: Brief, Concentrated Observations on Aspects of a Life with God, and Contemplative Enigmas: Insights and Aid on the Path to Deeper Prayer.

Father Haggerty recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his new book, the current state of the Church, and signs for hope for the future.

Catholic World Report: How did the book come about?

Father Donald Haggerty: The Hour of Testing is a work of serious spirituality, in continuity in that regard with my last book on St. John of the Cross and my previous books with Ignatius Press on contemplation and prayer.

But in this case, I write with a strong sense that a deeper response to God today must confront the great spiritual clash between light and darkness so prevalent in our time. The spiritual currents at work in our day can soak harmfully into us and enervate spiritual pursuit, or, confronted as a challenge, they can become a catalyst to a rich invitation from God in the pursuit of sanctity.

The meditative reflections that comprise this book arise from my own effort to gaze openly at the spiritual state of the world and the Church, and then to ask what God may desire from us in the realm of personal offering and interior spiritual insight at such a time. The five initial chapters take up an assortment of problematic issues affecting both the Catholic and secular world. These chapters serve as a springboard to insights of spiritual focus in the latter two-thirds of the book.

The spiritual troubles of the day do raise the provocative question whether we are moving historically toward some climactic moment as the years of this century continue. The book is not an effort to prognosticate on such a possibility, but to point to deeper approaches in spirituality in a time of uncertainty. The future may be unpredictable, but precisely that uncertainty calls for a leap toward greater personal intensity in our pursuit of God.

CWR: Tell us a little about this “Time of Ecclesial Uncertainty” to which the subtitle refers. What is uncertain about it?

Father Haggerty: It is hard not to notice the state of ambiguity that has affected important aspects of traditional Catholic teaching in recent years. The tensions of theological differences that initially caused strain in the Church in the aftermath of the Vatican Council have become more dangerous polarities of division in the Church at this time. Theological positions and pastoral approaches that were clearly crossing boundaries of unacceptability in a previous time now seem to draw a more welcome reception.

The question of ecclesial uncertainty is in large part a matter of ecclesiology. It is linked to the effort to move toward a greater spirit of democratization in the understanding of Catholic doctrinal teaching, with the assumption that Catholic teaching can be subject to re-consideration and alteration. In traditional Catholic understanding, there are irreversible, changeless teachings, including doctrinal teachings in morality regarding the prohibition of acts that are intrinsically evil, forbidden always and allowing no exception in any circumstance or for any motive.

The great ecclesial uncertainty in our time is not simply the possibility of a rupture with an irreversible teaching in a magisterial document, from which the Church has been spared thus far, but that a de facto acceptance of practices contrary to Catholic moral teaching will be largely unopposed by hierarchical leadership and assimilated among Catholics as unproblematic. I do not spend much time in this book addressing such matters, but I am aware of the implications if a more explicit rupture with Catholic doctrine were to occur.

My concern in the first third of the book is to awaken in readers a sense of the magnitude of the crisis in faith in our day, affecting the Church and world, so that souls of generosity find themselves resonating with the deeper spiritual insights that comprise the bulk of the book in the latter two-thirds.

CWR: Why is it important for us to have “a sense of our own historical time in the Church”, as you say in the book? What difference does this make to our spiritual lives?

Father Haggerty: Eras in the Church vary greatly, of course. The opportunities for holiness in any period of history are never detached from the state of the Church and society in that time. The early Church was distinguished in sanctity, in part by the heroic response of anonymous martyrs to Roman persecutions. The era that followed witnessed the influx of men and women into the deserts of Egypt and Syria to embrace heroic lives of sacrificial asceticism, prayer, and self-offering.

The history of the Church is in part a history of the choice for a heroic life of self-offering. This choice for a radical gift to God continues as an inspiration through all eras in a manner inseparable from an historical period. It is possible that our own twenty-first century will find itself confronting this challenge in a unique manner. The decline of Christian faith in the West, especially in Europe, has been dramatic in recent decades, and this trend shows little sign of ebbing. An indifference to God and traditional morality permeates the larger society in the West, including in our own country.

At the same time, intense lives of prayer and Christian commitment are evident. The contrast is sharp and striking. A thematic undercurrent throughout this book is to raise the question whether the Church must be prepared at some point to re-live the last week of Jesus’ Passion in a mysterious manner. This possibility provokes serious considerations for personal spirituality. We may be entering an historical era in which the Church herself is shaken and persecuted, even from within its internal structure. It will be a time in which the choice for heroic self-offering will demand a very radical embrace of Jesus’ Passion in our personal lives, in a love for souls and the Church.

CWR: Some people speculate that we are currently in the midst of the Church’s “final trial” before Christ’s second coming. What do you say in response to that?

Father Haggerty: I avoid any attempt to offer speculation or prognosis of this nature. Prophetic utterance is spiritually risky and foolhardy. It is quite unknown how our own history will play out in this century. Reversals of trends are always possible; at the same time, it may be unwise to embrace too optimistically a thought that all matters of current concern in the Church and society are simply a passing phase. It is a truth of history that it moves slowly at times, and in other periods precipitously, often under the impact of powerful personalities.

It is important to remember, perhaps, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, that prior to the Second Coming of Christ, there will be a period of intense persecution within the Church, perhaps an internal battle within the Church, and the ascendency at some point of the Antichrist as a public figure in that historical time. The book does take up this question in a particular chapter. But these considerations are addressed in a tone of sober analysis, with a view to being alert to our time and to the need to avoid deception. Playing a game of identifying the Antichrist is a foolish endeavor; one would do better betting on the New York State lottery.

If such a figure does arise in this century, however, it may be helpful to perceive the mistaken assumptions we might carry, and to be clear that the seductive nature of such a personage may offer the most serious challenge to his recognition. Above all, it is crucial, no matter what happens, that we remain fixed firmly in our Catholic commitment and dedicated to prayer and to a life lived for other souls.

CWR: One of the chapters is entitled “Divine Vulnerability: Contemplating the Wounds of God”, which is an interesting concept that could sound oxymoronic. How could God be vulnerable? And what can we learn from this?

Father Haggerty: Jesus Christ is God in the flesh who dies on a Roman Cross in Jerusalem, and so we can speak properly of a crucified God. God is murdered on that day, as Melito of Sardis taught in the second century, in accord with what later became known as the principle of the communicatio idiomatum. The impassibility of God, his incapability of change or of suffering, is a dogma of the Church.

Yet a great Doctor of the Church like St. Bernard affirmed that although God cannot suffer, he can suffer with. In Bernard’s understanding, God is not passionless precisely because in his essential nature he is love. Joseph Ratzinger, in a Marian reflection, quotes Origen in this matter: “In his love for man the Impassible One suffered compassionate love.” The Passion of Christ is the choice of God to be wounded for love of his creature, and this truth continues in mystery throughout history. The vulnerability of God to be wounded in love is likely to manifest itself in a stronger manner as the years progress.

Spiritually, for those with eyes to see, a recognition of God being wounded in love can become a sacred insight. We love him to the extent that we are wounded in love for him as we gaze upon his divine gift of infinite love treated with indifference in the present day. These wounds are bound to show themselves more transparently in a last era of the Church, which is to say perhaps that God will be dishonored to some extent within his own Church.

The thought of our Lord wounded within his Church may shine a light otherwise unavailable on events that might disturb or shake us. It is a light that can lead to greater love for God and his mystery, and for persevering in faithfulness to his Church.

CWR: What essential insights do you offer in the book as an approach to spirituality in an era that may prove to be of decisive importance for the Church?

Father Haggerty: This book is primarily a work on the interior life of prayer. By this I do not mean a book that teaches techniques or methods of prayer, or explains the stages of advancement in prayer. Rather, it offers an extended commentary on what deeper relations with God can entail when we allow our soul to be enflamed by a consuming desire for God.

The opening of our soul in receptivity to God is not a passive thing, as many contemporary forms of spirituality mistakenly espouse and encourage. Deeper layers of soul come alive only as we pursue more single-mindedly a pure desire to offer ourselves more fully to God. There are insights and commentary that can inflame this desire and can lead it to deeper regions of self-offering, which is my intention here in this book. What God desires from us in every era of the Church is a life given away in love and lived for souls, a life that is drawn mysteriously to replicate to some degree Jesus’ own sacrificial oblation for souls.

The book offers many concentrated reflections on the nature of this deeper offering to God. Our offering to God is grounded in prayer and intensified in prayer and then stretches out beyond prayer into all of life, with its sufferings and trials, in its delights in the providential signs of the divine presence, in its opportunities to live for souls. The beauty of a deeper life with God in a time of ecclesial trial may be above all in the recognition that God himself chases after souls intently and uses souls of prayer as his instruments in this work.

The active release of our surrender to God in prayer, which has many variations of generosity, such as in becoming a victim of his deeper love, and many repercussions beyond prayer, can open us to become with the Virgin Mary a vehicle for the salvation of souls in an era of acute spiritual testing.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Father Haggerty: My own spiritual sense at this point in life is that the Passion of Christ must be a passionate love at the center of our life of prayer. I would return to a comment made previously. If it is true that in a last era of the Church, Jesus will live out within the Church the sufferings of his own last week before his death at Calvary, the Church during such a time must choose to live a spirituality in union with significant features of Jesus’ own last week. The heart of the Church will thrive as souls accept and embrace a mysterious replication of Jesus’ last week within their lives for the sake of his Church. Despite what may seem turmoil and division in the Church, souls that embrace this truth will open themselves to an invitation to serious holiness. The life of prayer is always essential, because our relations with God are inseparable from a very personal response to God in prayer.

In a time of ecclesial confusion and unsteadiness, with many unstable signs, there is nonetheless the same Lord of the Passion at Calvary who invites us to thirst with his thirst on the cross for souls in need. The Passion of Christ at Calvary can become our home in prayer, our place of deeper challenge, and our refuge of intimacy with God. My hope would be that readers of this book, which primarily seeks to awaken deeper lives of prayer, will be caught by this invitation and recognize the implications of every deeper gift of the soul to God–to live for souls in need in the present day.

That willingness to give our lives for souls in need may become a quite stark and pressing demand in our own lifetimes.

CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Father Haggerty: A great desire for God can never be frustrated when it is genuine. The question of whether we are living a time in which the birth pangs of some momentous time in the Church are beginning to show their signs is secondary to the essential need to become saints, if this is at all possible. It is indeed possible if we turn our vision quite starkly to the difficult circumstances of our day and resolve to give ourselves more fully to God in a personal way.

Those who live primarily for the sake of a satisfying life in this world have always gone to their death mistaken about the truth of life. We are living now in a time when the pursuit of a satisfying life in a worldly sense may indeed be a bad mistake. If we open our eyes there are clear indications that we may be living an era of preparation for grave events in the Church and the world. This possibility should not frighten or dismay us; it should animate a desire for a spiritual response of intense desire and clarity.

The possibility that many hidden saints will live in a last era of the Church is a beautiful thought. We are meant ourselves possibly to walk this path into sanctity. This book invites a reader to see more clearly the interior choices that will plunge our soul more deeply into God and thereby respond to his desire for souls of great self-offering in what possibly may become in due time a last era of the Church.