You have one of those things, don’t you? You’re minding your own business, and it whacks you upside the head.

Again. And again. Just a small thing, but it keeps getting the better of you. You don’t want to make a big deal out of it. Who really cares if people ask, “How are you?” but don’t answer the question when you ask it back. Rationalize it any way you can, but still, you brood over this. You rehearse scenarios in which you will somehow alter the conversation in such a way that your antagonist suddenly understands his faux pas, and gains insight into why “HAY” is actually sort of a rude question in the first place, especially when it’s asked of someone who is at work, which is the opposite time and place of the time and place when one can honestly answer the question.

“This person,” I say, “is an emotional fascist. He demands that I answer the question, but refuses to answer it himself. And what a fool I am not to have a better set of stock responses to that question. Fool I am that I take the question personally. Fool! Blasted out of my hard-gained equilibrium by the same little thing time and again.”

Fast forward 100 years. “He endured great and grievous, dark and dangerous spiritual trials,” says His Holiness. “Only a genuine saint such as he could have borne up under the countless interrogations directed at him so many times, for so many years. ‘How are you?’ they persisted. Our saint smiled, in his heart prayed, ‘Father! Forgive them!’ and said, ‘I’m okay!'”

“That is a great spiritual trial?” some would laugh. “How the great saints will laugh!”

The great spiritual trials of the saints have been the fiercest affairs. Our age has been blessed with outstanding examples of bravery, courage, fortitude, and faith: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. faced trials I don’t know how anyone could have faced.

“The dark night of the soul” has the romantic appeal one isn’t surprised at, coming from Carmelite poet St. John Of The Cross.

Mother Teresa underwent a lengthy dark night, a period of aridity, of doubt. She persevered throughout this great spiritual trial.

“Where are my great spiritual trials?” I have asked. What experiences have I had that outside observers would find impressive? In my mind, there have been some, but I hesitate to compare them to the tangible and intangible tortures inflicted upon others, saints and otherwise.

But that’s what the spiritual trials want– underestimation. The occasional burst of ugly profanity– not a big deal! It happens involuntarily, and would take an effort to eradicate that you’re not quite willing to undertake, so it’s a spiritual trial you haven’t the will to engage and overcome. You laugh to hear it described as a “great spiritual trial,” because if it was that momentuous, you would join the battle and prevail.

After you defeat it, you might think, “That wasn’t such a great spiritual trial after all,” but no matter. You honestly faced an issue that was compromising your better self, and defeated it.

Along the road, we are beset by plenty of these trials, these opportunities, all this baggage that weighs us down. Better to defeat a “great spiritual trial” and wonder how great it really was than to be defeated by a spiritual trial I allow to become greater than me because I refuse to take it seriously!