What To Do When Prayer Feels Dry

Re-reading the Diary of St. Faustina recently had me experiencing a bit of spiritual whiplash.

She describes ravishing joy: “His presence penetrates me to my very depths and fills me with peace, joy, and amazement, After such moments of prayer, I am filled with strength and extraordinary courage to suffer and struggle. Nothing terrifies me, even if the whole world should turn against me” (480).

She also reveals moments of heaviness: “A great darkness came over my soul.  I could not pray” (655).

Reading about a great saint’s spiritual ups and downs can be reassuring when we are trying to navigate our own. We may have experienced great joys and consolations in prayer, only to find ourselves in the proverbial desert later.

These times of dryness can catch us off guard if we don’t know what is happening and why. We may think that something is wrong with us or our prayer when in fact, we may be moving into a new kind of intimacy with God—a deeper union, one that can only happen in the dark.

The loss of the sense of God’s comforting presence in prayer is commonly called “aridity” and can have either a human or divine origin.  If human, the source is our frailty: we may be tired, distracted, distant from the sacraments, inconsistent, or dabbling in sin. The natural consequences of original sin and our own sins make prayer hard and laborious. The remedy is straightforward: repent, get right with God, take care of our own needs, and find peace restored.

But sometimes nothing outwardly changes, and yet all our interior lights go out. Our prayer loses its sweetness.

This is called purgative aridity, purifying aridity, or contemplative aridity. And it is a work of grace.

There are three signs that our spiritual suffering has a divine origin, as explained by St. John of the Cross:

First, we find no consolation in God—but neither do we find it in creaturely things. Nothing in the world can satisfy us.

Second, we are still preoccupied with seeking the Lord.  We cannot shrug away His apparent absence; rather, we continue to grope in the dark for His face. 

Third, the old familiar ways of praying that used to bring us so much joy don’t “work” anymore.  It may be hard to meditate, or we may not be able to practice imaginative prayer.

If these three things are all present, then there is an invitation given to us in what feels like a wasteland: Love God for God alone.

Fulton Sheen explains this using marital terms:

At the beginning one loves God only for His gifts, for the emotions He sends us. He treats us, then, like a young woman who is being courted. If gifts are no longer given in such abundance after a true marriage has occurred, it is not because the husband’s love is less but because it is greater.

For now he gives himself.

It is not the husband’s gift the wife loves, nor his compliments, nor even the thrill of pleasure she gets from his company.  She loves him.

The moment the lover is loved for who that person is, then the nature of the gift ceases to matter.  Similarly, if God withdraws all sensible gifts, all natural happiness, it is only because He wants the union between the soul and Himself to be more personal and less dependent on His generosity [Emphasis added]. (Fulton Sheen, That Tremendous Love)

In other words, the soul is approaching a purer kind of love and union: one with nothing between it and God — not emotions, feelings, holy tears, or imaginative images. In the end, God will communicate Himself to us directly—and as we mature in prayer, we get a glimpse of that future glory. But that can be painful when it feels like He is missing.  The reality is, only the consolations are gone.  He is working to draw us even closer to Himself.

When I was young, I loved going to visit my grandparents.  They were retired and able to give me plenty of attention.  Grandpa patiently taught me to play the organ and made me ice cream floats. Grandma let me tag along to yard sales and showed me how to pull sun-warmed blackberries straight off the bushes in her huge backyard. Thinking of it now brings back a flood of favorite memories, highlights of my childhood.

Much later, after Grandpa had died, Grandma had declined to the point where she was in a nursing home. Dementia had set in, and visiting her was vastly different. Visiting meant sitting quietly with someone who had little to say. There was little conversation.  We just were.

Those last years with Grandma refined our love.  Liberated from experiences and expressions, love was simplified and purified. 

It is the same in our spiritual lives. We are strengthed and preserved from the possibility of pride should consolations continue unabated. Our love becomes selfless and pure. We grow in the virtues of hope and faith and find ourselves rooted in fidelity and stability.

So aridity can be a good, holy thing, a divine invitation—but what to do when we experience purgative aridity?  How can we stay faithful and ensure that this grace is allowed to do fully its purifying work in our souls?

Seven suggestions:

1. Do not be disturbed.  Once you’ve determined that the dryness has a divine origin, surrender to it and even thank God for it.  Give Him permission to finish the purifying work He’s begun.
2. Do not force the same kind of prayer that used to bring consolation but now feels like a dead end. Trying to “recreate” a spiritual experience will lead to frustration and fatigue.
3. Be faithful to prayer time.  Do not neglect your regular practice of prayer, even though it does not feel like it used to. Give the Holy Spirit as much time as ever to pray in you when you feel like you cannot pray.
4. Know that the consolations will come again. The spiritual life has seasons of dryness and seasons of sweetness. We do well to remember that spring is always around the corner: “The desert will rejoice, and flowers will bloom in the wilderness” (Isaiah 35:1).
5. Keep your gaze on Jesus.  He is gazing on you, always, even in the dark. Find ways to stay centered on Him – the Eucharist, adoration hours, and inwardly, too—recalling His sufferings for you as you suffer His “absence”.
6. Stay near to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She reveals Jesus in the darkness. In “And in Her Morning”, the Carmelite poet Jessica Powers (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit) writes that while Mary does not dwell within us as does the Trinity, when God “hides Himself in Midnights” she “holds my east horizon and whose glow/lights up my inner landscape high and low…And in her light I find You hid within me,/and in her morning I can see Your Face.”  I love that image.
7. Console Jesus. Now it is your turn! When consolations disappear, reject the temptation to self-centeredness and sadness. Instead, in your prayer, console the Heart of Jesus, so wounded by our transgressions. Offer Him your interior suffering as a balm for His pierced Heart.

Above all, believe that the Lord loves you—immensely—and cannot be outdone in generosity.  See the withdrawal of “spiritual candy” as a sign that you are ready for more, not less, in prayer. And praise Him always.