Fénelon’s Counsel for the Christian Who Feels Far From God
⏱ 10 min read
God feels distant and you do not know how to close the gap. You are still going through the motions — the morning Bible, the bedtime prayer, the Sunday service — but the felt nearness has thinned, and somewhere inside the practice you have begun to wonder whether He has moved or whether something in you has stopped registering Him.
François Fénelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose pastoral correspondence was gathered after his death into the volume we read in English as Spiritual Progress, wrote a small letter for the soul in exactly this position. He had directed too many quiet souls through the same passage to misread it as abandonment. He recognised it as a passage of purification — the moment when the felt sense of God is withdrawn so that the naked faith underneath can be strengthened. The letter we are reading here belongs in that group: a quiet pastoral note from a man who had spent forty years writing to souls in felt darkness and knew what to say to one. The Stilling Waves Dry Season Devotional was built as the daily small home for this exact passage — one short page per evening, one quiet sentence, one return to the page when the felt nearness has gone. For now, the Fénelon text.
The felt distance, named
The Christian feeling far from God is rarely far from God. She is far from the feeling of God — which is a different thing, and which Fénelon, in his quiet pastoral way, will spend the whole letter distinguishing. The feeling of God is what most Christians, in their first decade of walking, take to be the substance of their faith. The warm assurance in worship. The lifted heart in prayer. The sense, walking through the morning, that He is near. These felt nearnesses are real, and they are gifts, and they are not the same thing as the faith they sit on top of.
When the felt nearness thins, the Christian who has mistaken it for the faith itself concludes that the faith has thinned. Fénelon’s pastoral move is to insist, gently and without alarm, that this is not what has happened. The faith is intact. The felt layer has been withdrawn. And the withdrawal, far from being a punishment, is the next stage of the formation — the stage in which the faith learns to walk on its own, without the felt scaffolding it had been leaning on.
The first passage: the silent fidelity
“God does not call you by any lively emotions, and I heartily rejoice at it, if you will but remain faithful; for a fidelity, unsustained by delights, is far purer, and safer from danger, than one accompanied by those tender feelings, which may be seated too exclusively in the imagination.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice what Fénelon dares to say. I heartily rejoice at it. He is rejoicing at the absence of lively emotions in the soul he is writing to. This is not the consolation a modern Christian usually receives in this passage. The modern consolation is the feeling will come back — which may be true, and Fénelon does not deny it — but it is not where the seventeenth-century director starts. He starts by telling the soul that the felt withdrawal is itself a purer and safer condition than the one she has just left, and that her real spiritual maturation is happening precisely in the fidelity unsustained by delights that she is currently practising without knowing it.
Tender feelings, which may be seated too exclusively in the imagination. This is the diagnostic Fénelon offers the felt-distance Christian. The felt nearness that has been withdrawn was partly seated in the imagination — not falsely, but partially — and the imagination was being asked to do work that, in the long arc of the soul’s walk with God, the naked faith must learn to do without help. The withdrawal of the felt nearness is the soul being given back its own naked faith, made to walk on it, and quietly strengthened by the walking.
The line to keep near the page is the fidelity unsustained by delights. The morning prayer prayed without the felt response. The Bible read without the warm assurance. The hymn sung without the lifted heart. These are not the faith failing. These are the faith maturing. The Christian fenelon feeling far from god counsel, in one sentence: the silent fidelity is the purer thing, and you are doing it whether or not you can feel it.
The second passage: the quiet vigilance against forgetfulness
“If, then, we never lost sight of the presence of God, we should never cease to watch, and always with a simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance; while, on the other hand, the watchfulness which is the result of a desire to be assured of our state, is harsh, restless, and full of self.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
Read this one twice. A simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance.
The Christian feeling far from God is often watching her own state. Am I close enough? Am I doing it right? Is He near? Why does He not feel near? The watching is constant. The watching is exhausting. The watching, Fénelon notes with his characteristic mildness, is harsh, restless, and full of self. It is not the vigilance of love. It is the vigilance of self-assurance — the soul’s small, anxious self-examination, looking for evidence of God’s presence in itself rather than trusting God’s presence quietly without evidence.
A simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested vigilance. This is the watchfulness Fénelon recommends for the felt-distance Christian. Simple — undivided. Lovely — love-shaped, not anxiety-shaped. Quiet — without the noise of self-examination. Disinterested — without the self-interest of needing to feel He is near in order to know He is near. The vigilance is towards Him, not towards the state of the soul. The soul that watches Him quietly — and stops watching itself for evidence of His presence — usually discovers, weeks or months later, that He was nearer the whole time than the felt sense had let her register.
This is the second movement of the felt-distance posture. Stop watching yourself. Watch Him. Quietly. Without insisting on a felt return. The felt return, if it comes, will come as a gift; the fidelity unsustained by delights is the faithful life either way.
For the daily home this watching needs, the Stilling Waves Dry Season Devotional holds a short page for the evening quiet vigilance and the morning return to the naked faith, structured for the Christian whose felt nearness has thinned and who needs a written room in which to keep practising the silent fidelity while the felt layer is reformed.
The somatic — the dropped chest
Pause here. Sit somewhere quiet. Notice your chest.
The Christian feeling far from God carries the felt distance in the small lift of the chest. The shoulders are raised half an inch. The sternum is held slightly forward, as if leaning toward the missing nearness. The body has been straining toward Him — physically, slightly, all day — because the felt distance has the body trying to close a gap that the naked faith says is not really there.
Let the chest drop slightly. Let the sternum settle back. Let the shoulders fall the half-inch they have been holding. Stay there for one slow breath. The body relaxes when it is told, in posture rather than in words, that the straining is not necessary — that He is not actually distant, that the felt distance is a phase, and that the body does not have to lean toward a place where He already is.
Stay in the dropped chest for thirty seconds more. Then read on. The body’s small un-straining is the smallest version of the naked faith Fénelon is teaching. The body that has stopped leaning toward an absent nearness can rest in the present one. The body that is still straining cannot.
The third passage: the leisure hours
“Our leisure hours are ordinarily the sweetest and pleasantest for ourselves; we can never employ them better than in refreshing our spiritual strength, by a secret and intimate communion with God.”
— François Fénelon, Spiritual Progress
The third passage names the small practical remedy. Our leisure hours.
The Christian feeling far from God has often, without noticing, given her leisure hours to the things most likely to deepen the felt distance — the phone, the noise, the easy escapes. The leisure hour was the hour the felt nearness used to settle in. It has, over the months, been gradually colonised by the small distractions that crowd out secret and intimate communion. The felt nearness has thinned partly because the room it used to occupy has been filled with something else.
Fénelon’s small practical move is to give the leisure hour back to Him. Not the working hour. Not the duty hour. The hour that is yours — the early morning before the house wakes, the quiet half-hour before bed, the unexpected gap on a Saturday afternoon — given quietly, in secret and intimate communion, without programme, without expectation of felt return, without anything but the small presence held open.
Refreshing our spiritual strength. This is the daily slow restoration Fénelon promises. Not a felt jolt of nearness. A quiet refreshing of the spiritual strength underneath the felt layer. The leisure hour given to Him — even held in silence, even held unsustained by delights — quietly rebuilds the strength of the naked faith, and the naked faith, after a season of this rebuilding, becomes the load-bearing thing the felt nearness was never meant to be.
Three small returns
If you take nothing else from this letter, these three returns are the spine of the felt-distance posture:
The first return is the silent fidelity — continuing the morning prayer, the evening Bible, the small worship, without insisting on a felt response. The faith underneath the practice is being matured by the very practice that feels unsupported. A fidelity unsustained by delights is far purer.
The second return is the quiet vigilance toward Him — turning the watching outward, away from the state of the soul, toward the steady presence of God Himself. Simple, lovely, quiet and disinterested. The self-examination eases. The watchfulness becomes loving rather than anxious.
The third return is the leisure hour given back — the small daily reclaiming of the unstructured hour, given quietly to secret and intimate communion, without programme. The room the felt nearness used to settle in is slowly cleared out, and the naked faith is given the space to grow into the load-bearing thing it is becoming.
For the wider field this letter sits inside, the sibling letters in this cluster walk the neighbouring quiet souls: Fénelon’s Letter to the Soul in Scruple walks the over-careful soul whose felt distance comes from her own self-judgement, and Fénelon’s Counsel for the Christian Who Cannot Be Still walks the restless soul that fears the stillness this letter requires. If the underlying question has been one of prayer itself, Andrew Murray’s counsel for the Christian who cannot pray walks the prayer side of the same dry passage.
What changes, slowly
The felt nearness does not return on schedule. Fénelon is honest about this. The naked faith is, however, strengthened slowly by the very practice that feels unsupported, and after a season — sometimes weeks, sometimes months — the Christian who has continued the silent fidelity finds that her interior has changed in ways the felt layer never told her. The faith is deeper. The watching is quieter. The leisure hour has filled with a different kind of nearness — not the warm, lifted felt nearness of year one, but the quieter, more settled, naked nearness of year fifteen. The God who feels distant is, in the slow Fénelon reading, often the God who is teaching the soul to walk by sight of Him directly, without the felt scaffolding it had been leaning on.
This is the counsel Fénelon offered the Christian feeling far from God: not a programme to recover the felt nearness, but the quiet permission to keep walking faithfully without it, until the naked faith underneath is strong enough to be the steady thing the felt nearness was never meant to be.
A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Dry Season Devotional.
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Stilling Waves is preparing reprints of Fénelon’s pastoral letters, including Spiritual Progress, for the Christian whose God has gone quiet and who needs the seventeenth-century French director near the page while the naked faith is quietly reformed.
