From the Heart of the Shepherd

From the bulletin for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Apr 06, 2025)

Parish School of Prayer, Pt 17: Dryness

It’s almost time to “go up” with Our Lord to Jerusalem, exchanging the Lenten desert for the drama of a Holy City turned all upside down by the events of Passion Week. Before leaving the wilderness, however, I want to reflect on dryness in prayer. 

You’ve experienced it. We try to pray, but nothing comes. No pious thoughts. No holy affections. We open our hearts but, like a dry faucet, no words come forth. We read page after page, but nothing seems to move us. Instead of awareness of God, we are tangled in distractions, lost in rabbit-hole reveries, falling again and again into rehearsed monologues or imagined interactions. Or simply twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the next thing. 

True, we might not be praying at all. Dryness can be the result of our own failures. Perhaps we never took the time to recollect ourselves by setting all things aside to turn to the Lord. Or, our difficulties could result from unresolved anxieties or disordered attachments of the heart, which keep us earth-bound because we are unwilling to surrender them to God. Perhaps deep down we actually prefer to be occupied with our worries, fantasies, or plans rather than open ourselves to the demands of the living God. Finally, dryness could also be due to some physical indisposition: illness, sleepiness, a bad mood. In all these cases, the solution means addressing the underlying cause. Surrender your distractions, uncertain hopes, and anxieties to God. Quiet your mind and body. Take care of your body’s legitimate needs or show it who’s boss in a more resolute way. 

It could be, too, that difficulties in prayer are the result of our spiritual condition. Examine your conscience: have I offended God? If so, the pathway back to God must pass through the prayer of repentance and reconciliation. 

But sometimes dryness is actually the result of progress in prayer. We are moving deeper into the desert, as it were, though the oasis is still a long way away. God tests His lovers by withdrawing His consolations and any sensible effect of His grace, that they might have the opportunity to love Him alone, prove their fidelity, and exercise the kind of hope that does not yet see, feel or possess (cf. Rom 8:24). We must show ourselves willing to “wait on His word” (cf. Ps 130:5). And that means trusting and going without. Recognizing that there is little we can do; God must come and act in us, in His time. Seen in this way, dry prayer is a necessary stage. It’s the “narrow door” through which we must pass, leaving behind all of our reliance on self and everything other than God alone. 

St. John of the Cross loved to recall that while we are occupied with created things, we have not yet arrived at God. Thoughts, desires, feelings–however holy–cannot bridge the gap. These are but the shell, or the on-ramp to a prayer that touches God (without feeling any thing!). For John, pure prayer is the gaze of trusting love that simply believes God is there, waits for Him to act, and loves above all creatures. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit!” Blessed are those who are poor in lofty ideas or sensible affections, who nevertheless look to the Lord and wait for the coming of His Kingdom. They have begun to pray. “Like the eyes of a maid on the hand of her mistress,” such souls fix their eyes on the Lord, until He show them His favor (cf. Ps 123:2-3). Like a parched land, they stretch out their hands to the Lord (cf. Ps 143:6), who seems separated from them by an impenetrable cloud, which they are unable to pierce by thought or petition. Persevering, they will be purified. God, who “turns a desert into pools of water and a dry land into flowing springs” (Ps 107:35), will lead them deeper, to tap into the living water flowing beneath the surface of things, and quench their thirst with a peace that surpasses all feelings and understanding (Phil 4:7).

From the Heart of the Shepherd: The Fourth Sunday in Lent