Periods of Spiritual Dryness
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| (Found here) |
It is necessary to know the methods that God usually employs when He raises the soul to the way of perfection. At the commencement, He loads it with favors. This is in order to give it an idea of what He is, to free it from the bondage of the visible world, and to enable it to appreciate the invisible world. He is lavish with His favors, draws the soul to Him with many consolations, and sets it on fire with burning love and the longing to continue the converse that has been interrupted. The soul feels the attraction. And how should it not be glad to be in such sweet company? The words of St. Peter on the mount of the Transfiguration rise spontaneously to our lips: ‘Master, it is good for us be here.’
Then suddenly everything changes. Sensible devotion in prayer, after having lasted for a long or short period, comes to an end — in some cases suddenly, in others more gradually. The brilliant sunshine is followed by a kind of night that is all the more dense because of the radiant sunlight that went before. The impression given is of someone passing from broad daylight into a tunnel or underground cellar.
Here it is that God is waiting. Some persons — and they are the larger number — lose heart, for they are less truly pious than they appeared to be, and were following God more for His favors than for Himself; therefore, now that prayer is no longer a delight, they abandon everything. They believe themselves to be generous, and perhaps others think they are; but in part, at any rate, they are unconsciously selfish. They were seeking not God, but themselves.
Now, it is God’s wish that we should — if we may venture to use the expression — look not at His hands, but at His Heart, not at what He gives, but at what He is. This is why on occasion He withdraws His sensible attractions and leaves us to the exercise of pure faith. He wishes to discover whether the soul is truly seeking Him or His benefits. God desires to dwell alone in the soul. He wishes to be loved for Himself, and so, sooner or later, He withdraws everything when He vouchsafes to raise the soul to higher stages of prayer, so that it may dwell with Him alone.
Hence these strange purifying experiences, both active and passive (the night of the soul and the night of the senses), through which God leads the soul. His aim is to reach down until there is nothing in the soul but Himself.
When pious writers refer to the solitude of God in the soul, they are alluding to this divine urgency. Happy are those whose generosity and ardor is strong enough to enable them to direct their lives toward this end, and who persevere unwearied in spite of periods of spiritual dryness and of desolation.
But we must clearly realize the line of demarcation that divides the truly interior soul from the pious dilettante who exerts himself only when it suits him. If, among the readers of these pages, there are any who at this moment are struggling in the dark night, beside our Lord in His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, let them understand that upon their perseverance depends the bestowal of graces, whose value they ignore, whence they will obtain a sanctified power of energy that will surpass their strongest hopes.”
~Raoul Plus (from How to Pray Always)
“...if we are to enjoy the Crucified, we must bear the Cross, and there is no need for us to ask Him for that ... for His Majesty treats those He loves as He treated His own Son.”
~St. Teresa of Avila
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