Wisdom of Yore

Spiritual dryness or aridity is a great difficulty experienced by a devout person towards prayer. It can come in all forms and is sometimes unavoidable, staying for weeks together too. The cause is always demonic.

I experience it and rarely does aridity conquer me. Forcing myself, I still pray hours together; my daily routine of prayer is 5 hours. But when it is utterly impossible to pray, I stop.

But during this phase lasting sometimes weeks together, God’s grace overwhelms me[Philippians 4:13; 2Cor 12:9b]. Truly, Christ is very strong in me when I’m weak.

Sts like St Catherine of Siena advised people to pray twice more when confronted with aridity. Her stance was to force herself to pray during these times. In all sense, it is a saintly and sound thing to do so.