Prayer is necessary. It also is incredible. Prayer changes us in the best way possible, and brings us in a loving and close relationship with God. Unfortunately, at times our concupiscence makes prayer life difficult. Prayer is not always exciting, sometimes, many times, it is dry. This dryness can be described as not feeling God’s presence or not feel His presence as strong as you should.
How can we as Catholics fight against this? We need to keep praying, so we need to navigate through this dryness. In this article, I will go over why dryness happens, and how to get through it when it does.
Where Does This Dryness Come From?
Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness. Dryness belongs to contemplative prayer when the heart is separated from God, with no taste for thoughts, memories, and feelings, even spiritual ones. This is the moment of sheer faith clinging faithfully to Jesus in his agony and in his tomb. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if dies, it bears much fruit.” 18 If dryness is due to the lack of roots, because the word has fallen on rocky soil, the battle requires conversion.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2731
As the catechism explains, dryness comes from a separation from God. When our hearts cannot feel His presence, the goal of prayer, which is unification with God, is difficult to see and achieve. As a result prayer feels meaningless, devoid of life, and like a chore. This dryness can come from a lack of roots, meaning a lack of God being the center of our lives and knowing about the Gospel. That’s why the catechism states that this battles requires a conversion, there is something in our lives that needs to change.
One of those things that needs to change could be our attachment to vice and sin. Sin at its root is choosing ourselves and our own pleasures above what God wants for us. This root of sin, like the roots of weeds, prevents the roots of God from growing in our hearts.
The Dark Night
Another change that might need to happen is something that may not be very clear to us initially. God knows what we need, and guides us to our best versions of ourselves, as long as we follow his will. And sometimes, He needs to guide us by letting us wander through the desert of dryness in prayer. This is called the dark night of the soul, a term popularized by St John of the Cross.
The dark night is a process in which our souls receive goods and strengh, its a source of grace designed by God to make us stronger. Our senses cannot experience this strength, because our senses cannot experience the spiritual reality that is unfolding. Our senses cannot sense this soulful nourishment, so we feel dry and hungry.
Typically this will happen when someone is entering a more profound and extremely spiritual part of their spiritual life. If you are someone who has issues with vices and sins, or you have worldly attachments, you are probably not experiencing the dark night of the soul when you feel dryness in prayer. If your life is full of sin, you need to root this out before you can determine if you are experiencing a dark night.
Another Reason
I have noticed a disturbing trend in our society that I believe contributes to dryness in prayer. Our attention spans are becoming smaller and smaller. Prayer requires attention, time, and no distractions. Meanwhile, we live in a society that encourages and celebrates distractions. Our society is so addicted to TikTok and other short video format social media apps. All of our media is being designed to appeal to shorter attention spans. We are searching for faster and faster gratification, and it’s destroying our ability to keep our focus for more than a few minutes. The result is a downward spiral of attention, in which as time goes on out attention spans get shorter and shorter. In short, because our modern world destroys our ability to sit still and think for long periods of time, prayer becomes boring. The dryness in this situation comes from boredom!
There are other reasons we may feel dry however. Sometimes we are simply tired. Other times we are busy and stressed. Our lives can definitely cause these issues that make us distracted and unable to muster excitement, even when we should be excited to speak to the Creator of the Universe.
How Do We Fix Our Dryness?
Now that we’ve identified some common causes of spiritual dryness, we can come up with a strategy to defeat this obstacle to our prayer life.
- Make God the center of our lives- ask yourself if God is really the center of your life. Do you place anything or anyone above God? Do you think about God often?
- Fasting- fast from food, electronics, and anything attached to your vices.
- Try new prayers- sometimes you need to change things to make prayer more exciting. Try new prayers. Pick up a prayer book. Look up new styles of prayer.
- Confession- mortal sin and even venial sin keeps us from having a deeper relationship with God. Go to confession to make your soul clean again, so you can become closer to God.
- Catholic Meditation- Catholics should meditate, but not like Eastern religion meditation. Those religions involve emptying your mind. In Catholic meditation, we don’t empty our mind, we fill it with the goodness of God. Spend time in silence, just thinking about God, and how to become closer to God. Spend as long as you can without distractions, and strive to increase your time in meditation through daily practice.
- Prayer groups- sometimes praying with others can help you enter into a deeper prayer. Sometimes it could distract you however, so use your best judgement on whether or not a prayer group would be helpful.
- Spiritual reading- writings from the saints, theologians, and especially scripture can bring us into a deeper relationship with God, which can make prayer more fulfilling. Reading will also help with a short attention span.
- Take care of your body- diet and lack of exercise affects our focus. Lack of sleep definitely affects our focus. Take care of yourself so you can have a clear and strong mind ready for prayer.
- Keep going- sometimes you just need to keep going and keep pushing through. Keep up with your prayer life. And remember that prayer is not supposed to be about that good feeling you get, but it’s supposed to be about giving glory to God and forming a relationship with God.
Developing A Plan
You need to develop a plan to get yourself through this dryness. First and foremost, God needs to be at the center of your planning. Despite a lack of reassuring senses, you need to keep praying and keep asking God for His help. You also need to evaluate your relationship with God.
Only you can determine how to proceed from there. Since dryness in prayer is very personal, there isn’t really a one size fits all plan for everyone. A spiritual director can certainly help you in developing a plan, and if you have one it would be a great idea to involve them. Or, with plenty of self reflection and prayer, you can develop a plan on your own. Try some of the things on my list, and take notice if any changes happen. One thing is certain for every one of us when we face spiritual dryness in our prayer life, we need God’s help to get through it.