Hi, I'm Edwards Three, and welcome to all things Catholic where real faith meets real life. What do when you do when you're going through a rough period?

When everything just seems a little bit off, everything in your friendships, your family life, your work, you feel like you're dropping balls,

you're failing, or you're just feeling a lot of pressure, or maybe you're just feeling

lonely, hurt, misunderstood, are just overwhelmed.

You feel like you're just not doing a good job

as a mom or as a dad or as a Christian disciple.

And most of all, you just don't feel close to God.

You wonder, where is God in the midst of all this

your prayer is dry you go through the motions you're doing Catholic things

but in the midst of this rough spot in life, you just don't sense God is there.

This week the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of a great saint, a doctor of the

church, a great mystic. His name is St John of the Cross. I don't know if you

know but St. John Paul II had a great devotion to John of the Cross. He wrote his doctoral

dissertation on the writings of St John of the Cross. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the writings of St John of the

the Cross and when he became Pope he declared John of the Cross a Doctor of the Church

which is someone that's held up as a preeminent teacher for us and a great guide. Now his writings are thick, they're often

misunderstood, taken out of context, but they could be so helpful for us. If we really understood the

spirituality of St John of the Cross, it could help us shine some

light in those times of darkness that we can experience in life, especially in the spiritual life.

In fact, one of the things John the Cross helps us to see

is that in those periods where things just seem off,

where things in our life, things in our relationships, things in our spiritual life,

...