What is going on with my prayer life? Should I really just be sitting in silence?

Q: I am struggling with my prayer life. I go to my 30-minute prayer time and nothing happens. But I stick it out anyway, as best I can. It seems like sheer willpower (and invisible grace) against everything else. “Well, I have nothing better to do for the next 47 years, Lord. I’ll wait it out like this, if that’s what you want.” I am frustrated.

A: This is a great question, but it’s hard to answer without a bit more context. Let me give some short answers pointed towards some hypothetical contexts.

Let’s say you are a normal lay person, or even a young religious, who has recently discovered the reality of God’s love for you, maybe through a retreat or a parish Bible study that set your heart on fire. You now desire to develop a deeper prayer life. You start by setting aside time on a daily basis to spend just with God – your daily God-time. But when you go there, you find it hard to concentrate. It’s not so easy as when you were on retreat, for some reason. And even when you do concentrate, you don’t seem to hear God speaking to you – nothing seems to happen. What’s the deal?

The Liberation of Structure

In this case, the best thing you can do is to give structure to your daily God-time. Structure, in general, actually frees us for more meaningful activity, contrary to much of popular opinion. We can only be free to play a Mozart sonata once we have disciplined ourselves regarding certain structures of music. In personal prayer, having a structure frees you to allow the Holy Spirit to work in your soul however he wishes. You are not just looking and waiting for dramatic manifestations of the Spirit, which you may have had on retreat or at the parish activities. Rather, you use your mind, heart, and imagination to search for a deeper knowledge and experience of God. And Jesus made a promise regarding that: “Search, and you shall find…” (Matthew 7:7).

What structure should you use? Here no hard and fast rules apply. You can make up your own, get ideas from someone you respect or from your spiritual director, use structures, materials, and recommendations from other sources… The important thing is always to remember that no structure is perfect, and no structure will actually do your prayer for you. But by having a structure, you take the pressure off yourself, and free yourself to be open to whatever God may want from you. I highly recommend the structure explained and embodied in The Better Part: A Christ-Centered Resource for Personal Prayer. But other structures abound. The important thing is to start using one. You can adjust as you go. In any event, a key element for mental prayer, even for religious, is having some material that you can use to spark your reflection and conversation with Christ. I often recommend simply taking a good, solid, spiritual book (like This Tremendous Lover or I Believe in Love) and using the following structure for your daily God-time:

1. Recall that you are in God’s presence and ask him to bless your time together.
2. Read a short passage from the book.
3. Reflect on the passage: What does this really mean? What does it mean for me?
4. Respond to the ideas that struck you by speaking to God in your own words: thanking him, praising him, questioning him, asking him for grace…
5. Reflect on another passage…
6. Respond again…
7. Resolve, at the end of your daily God-time, to live out in during the day to come the insights that the Holy Spirit gave to your mind and heart during the prayer. Thank God for his blessings, and launch into the activities of the day.

If you begin following a structure in your daily God-time, and you still experience that “nothing happens,” then you need simply to persevere, and maybe experiment with other structures. Clearly, your soul needs to be disciplined and purified by ascesis (our own spiritual effort) in order for you to hear what God is saying to you. This ascesis may also necessitate some alterations in the habits of your daily life – use of mass media, rooting out of sinful habits, building in periods of silence… In such a situation, a spiritual director is of invaluable help.

The Case of Passive Purgation

A different case is someone who has been engaged in structured, daily mental prayer for many years, and how has no habits of sin or sinful attachments. This may be a lay person or a religious, and they have been traveling along the journey to spiritual maturity for many years, receiving plenty of guidance from competent spiritual directors. If someone in this situation goes to their daily period of mental prayer and “nothing happens,” it is most like a spiritual trial being sent by God. This trial requires the soul to throw itself into God’s arms, abandon the hopes of sensible consolation, and persevere in humble acts of faith, hope, and love, in spite of the seeming lack of reward. These trials are a preparation of the soul for greater intimacy with God, what’s called a “passive purification.” The Divine Doctor is operating on your soul while you are experiencing a kind of spiritual anesthesia. Take comfort from the example of the saints, keep doing your part, and trust that God knows what he’s up to – “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28).

In any case, we all can use the reminder our Lord gave to his followers many centuries ago: “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up…” (Luke 18:1).

How to give delight to the devil…

“Let us remember that the devil labors hard to disturb us at the time of meditation, in order to make us abandon it. Let him, then, who omits mental prayer on account of distractions be persuaded that he gives delight to the devil… let us, then, never give up meditation however great our distractions may be. St. Francis de Sales says that if, in mental prayer, we should do nothing else than continually banish distractions and temptations, the meditation would be very well made. Before him, St. Thomas taught that involuntary distractions do not take away the fruit of mental prayer.”

St. Alphonsus, The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection

Dark night or depression?

Q: Dear Sister Carmen, I am struggling with prayer – it is very dry and I feel very alone but I have not given up. I believe I am in the dark night but I am also melancholy by temperament. How can I discern what I am experiencing? I don’t have access to a spiritual director because of my remote location. Am I depressed or in the dark night or both? I know you can’t know everything about my situation via this simple question – can you point me in the right direction?

A: Dear Friend, You are right in saying that I can’t know everything about your situation. Each of us is an unrepeatable individual unique among all persons living today, those who have lived before us and those yet to come. God has created us and in so doing has a plan for each of us. We want to live our lives in accordance with that plan and thus seek to discern how the Holy Spirit is leading us. A good spiritual director, if available, can be of invaluable help in this.

I can only give you the signposts that are general standards for growth in the spiritual life and there are many variations in these in the way that God chooses to work in the individual soul.

Before discussing dryness in prayer let us back up a little and summarize some of what has already been said. We have been dealing with the beginning mansions of the Interior Castle of which the first three Mansions form a special grouping. These three are a preparation for entrance into the Fourth Mansion in which one experiences the Prayer of Quiet. Teresa provides us with visual images to describe the work to be done either actively or passively as one journeys toward union with God. She applies a universal image in trying to express her thoughts, that of “water”. What she terms the First Water is applied to the first three Mansions. She compares the work done here to one who obtains water from the well by means of lowering and pulling up the bucket – hard work – but in Teresa’s day necessary if that was the only means at hand to obtain the precious water. How important was the water to the individual? Certainly a matter of life and death!

Thus in the spiritual life how important is our union with God to exercise the labor needed to reach our goal? The grace of God is there for us just as the water is in the depth of the well. Are we willing to use the means at hand to draw it up? Such means are: overcoming patterns of sin, practice of prayer, strengthening our sacramental life, practicing the Presence of God, cultivation of the virtues, bringing our wills into conformity with the will of Christ, detachment from worldly desires, practice of charity, etc. All of these are within the aid of ordinary grace. Much of the work here is “active work”, work we must do, with the help of God’s grace. And it is often slow work for growth takes time.

While all of us at one time or another may have experienced some form of consolation in prayer, however fleeting, the spiritual life is of too great a value to be an easy road. There is much hard work to be done especially in the first three mansions. It is here where we test the honesty and validity of our desire for a deeper relationship with God. Any relationship that is worthwhile takes profound commitment and arduous work on our part.

Now to get to the crux of your question! Why does wanting a deeper prayer life mean that often my prayer will be dry? And how do I determine whether this dryness is a result of spiritual growth or an effect of my melancholic temperament?

Can someone be going through the Dark Night and be experiencing melancholy at the same time? After all, many saints had a melancholic temperament. Regardless of our temperament each type has both strengths and weaknesses and of itself temperament does not stand in the way of spiritual growth. It is a part of what makes us the person we are. What we are referring to here is not our temperament but a form of melancholia or depression which can affect someone regardless of their temperament type. Yes, it is possible for someone to be going through both at the same time but it is not the usual case. Difficulties may be a source of suffering for us but not every suffering is the Dark Night.

If dryness is the result of one’s spiritual growth in prayer, the person will still have that strong desire to give him/her self totally to God through perseverance in prayer even when the senses feel no delight. Joy can also be experienced in suffering. On the other hand, melancholy closes the person in on self so that rather than seeking solitude to be alone with God in a loving relationship the person develops an unhealthy separation from others.

Generosity becomes a key word here. The one growing in prayer may not have a sense perception of the graces being received because the body is not perfectly conformed to the spirit and these graces are often very gentle and subtle, but the person is moved outwardly toward God and in service to others. Even if the person feels no delight in prayer the habitual attitude is to “give” rather than to “receive”, a characteristic quality of love. On the other hand,  dryness which results from melancholy turns the person inward on self suffocating the spiritual life.

Consolations may seem more pleasurable and are sometimes given by God because of our weakness. We give a small reward to a child to help them persevere in reaching their goal. It takes humility to walk in dryness recognizing our human frailty. But the strength we gain in the practice of fortitude draws us into closer conformity with Christ. If our path were to be strewn with consolations, what might be the deceptions that would assail us? The example of St. Bernadette is helpful here. Although the apparent rejection of her Novice Mistress was painful to her, she recognized that had she been treated as a favored one, it might have stunted her spiritual growth. The lack of human consolation enabled her to identify more closely with Christ Crucified.  If God leads us by the road of dryness it is because He knows what is best for us. We must have confidence that He seeks our happiness even more than we do ourselves.

In union of prayer,

Sister Carmen Laudis, O.C.D.

PS: To learn more about the Carmelite Sisters visit our web site: www.carmelitesistersocd.com and for more information please contact the sisters at contact@carmelitesistersocd.com, or 626-289-1353 Ext. 246, 920 East Alhambra Road, Alhambra, California 91801.

I discovered my root sin is vanity and I am struggling with this…

Q: Dear Father Edward, I just came to realize through spiritual direction, prayer and many graces that my root sin in Vanity!!! And I am having a very hard time knowing this fact. I feel like God is now leaving me alone (not feeling His presence) to test me and I am struggling with this fact. How do I continue to keep my faith strong and deal with the everyday insecurities in myself that I face? People have said to me that this “is where the rubber meets the road” and “I, too, use to see the world with “rose colored glasses,” but I really don’t understand what they mean! Thanks for your post and information. I am sure this journey is ongoing and I do thank God for all his gifts.

A: It is good to hear that God has given you the grace to understand yourself better. Even if you feel more humbled, remember that “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Let’s recall that vanity is an offshoot of pride. Whereas pride prompts us to put ourselves ahead of God and others, vanity makes us value the esteem of others more than the will of the Almighty. Admitting that vanity is our root sin can be a little embarrassing, especially if we perceive it as a defect of the immature or thin-skinned. In fact, vanity is more common than we think. And if we are not careful, it can worm its way into every pore of daily life.

Vanity has its obvious manifestations. We might be fastidious about our clothes, for instance, so as to attract attention. This helps keep the fashion industry solvent, but the downside is that it fuels the fires of egotism. Vanity has its subtle forms too. Let’s take the case of a neighbor who prepares a nice tray of lasagna for the bedridden mom down the street who can’t cook for her family at the moment. On the surface this seems a charitable deed. But deep down the person really might be doing it: 1) to show off her cooking skills, and 2) to ingratiate herself with this mom who happens to be the socialite beauty of the neighborhood. Or maybe a person works hard to carry out a project at the parish. The task took a lot of time and, by golly, he won’t pass up an opportunity to remind folks of his great sacrifice. In these two cases the good deeds done might not seem so good in the eyes of God. Vanity thus loses the graces that would otherwise flow from laudable deeds.

It can be a rude awakening, to say the least, to learn that we are vain. Suddenly all those “good deeds” we thought we were doing now appear as they really are: ego-feeders. That might be what the comment about the “rose colored glasses” meant. When we uncover vanity in our life, it sheds a different light on things. It can leave us feeling like a phony, a bit dejected.

Like other root sins, vanity is a response to a person’s insecurity. Maybe the person felt rejected as a child. Maybe he felt that he was never good enough for mom or dad. Maybe he felt overshadowed by a star sibling with an IQ of 173. Whatever the case might be, he felt insecure, and he has been looking for security in the esteem of others ever since. This isn’t the solution, however. The solution is for a person to put his security in Christ alone, to value Our Lord’s judgment above everyone else’s. And why not? Christ loves us more than anyone else does. He died on a cross for our salvation. His love continues to this day, which is why he allows certain challenges and dry periods in our life.

God might be leaving you in just such a state right now. Now that you understand your root sin (a grace in itself!), God wants to lead you further along. He does it by taking off the training wheels, so to speak. Not only does he want you to detach from your reliance on the opinions of others. He also wants you to detach from your expectations of how he shows his love to you. It is not that God has abandoned you; rather, he has probably just taken away the consolations you might be expecting to receive in prayer. Why does he do this? He does it to purify your intentions. He wants you to pray and work solely for love of him. He doesn’t want your devoutness to be based on good feelings or, heaven forbid, to allow it to feed any kind of egotism. In a sense, God wants his followers to break with vanity completely, especially since it can creep into the prayer life. “Oh, I was so fervent today at prayer/Mass/adoration … I’m really a great person.” Enough! says Christ. Do things for love of me alone. So God is testing you right now. He has led you into the desert and taken away consolations, all for the purpose of your drawing closer to him. Perseverance is the key now. Stick with your prayer life, no matter how dry it might seem. Have frequent recourse to the sacraments. Practice charity especially with those who are difficult to deal with. In this way Our Lord will forge in you a purer heart. For his glory, not yours.

Yours in Christ, Father Edward McIlmail, LC

Father McIlmail is a theology instructor at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, RI.

Dryness in Prayer Series

A good friend of Catholic Spiritual Direction alerted me to a few broken links with our Dryness in Prayer series. We have repaired the links. Please accept our apologies. The page with the list of posts can be found in the upper right corner of the blog under “Topical Series” and then “Dryness in Prayer.” If you are struggling with the seeming absence of God in your prayer life, these posts are likely to be of great benefit to you.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan