Perhaps we can start with the last question first. For Mother Teresa and for most people times of spiritual darkness are those days, weeks, months or even years when we have little or no felt sense of God's presence. In faith we believe God is always present, but sometimes or maybe often, we may not experience his presence.
Sometimes the dryness is caused by ourselves, sometimes by circumstances of our lives and sometimes it is caused by God. Let us now look at all three.
Dryness caused by ourselves
The following are some indications that spiritual dryness is our doing and not God's:
Our prayer has become disconnected from our real lives. The spiritual life is all of life and not just those times when we pray. The spiritual life includes every aspect of our lives, our relationships, work, business deals, recreation, finances. Any attempt to exclude God from any area of our lives may result in a feeling of God's absence.
We may be consciously, but more likely unconsciously angry or upset with God because he is not answering some prayer or helping us to deal with some painful aspect of our lives in a way we want him to do. When things go sour or bad in our lives and we cry out to God for help and no help seems to be coming we may withdraw from God. We may quit praying altogether or we may say prayers but in a rote fashion.
We may be intentionally holding onto some resentment and refusing to even pray for the grace to forgive a particular hurt.
We may be ignoring or denying some sinful pattern of behavior-which is very different from praying for the grace to deal with some weakness or sin. In the former case, we are excluding God. In the latter we are inviting God into a weak or sinful area of our lives.
We may be overworked and physically exhausted and unable to pray.
Perhaps we are not being honest with God about how we truly feel about the real stuff in our lives. We may be doing a lot of 'sweet talk' to 'sweet Jesus', but failing to tell him how mad we are about something in our lives and even how mad we are with him. In human relationship when we stop being honest, the relationship flattens out and becomes boring and superficial. It is the same with our relationship with God.
God may have become a low priority in our lives. Hence, our prayer is rote, superficial and most likely not very meaningful.
So the above are some of the ways that we can push God away, some of the ways that we can build a wall between God and us, ways that we can cause our prayers to dry up.
The remedy for the above is in a sense easy enough. We just need to repent of wrongdoing on our part, repent of ways we have neglected our relationship with God, repent of our failure to be honest with God, repent any ways we have allowed other things to become more important than him.
Other circumstances that may cause our relationship with God to dry up
Sometimes our relationship with God is thrown into a time of spiritual darkness when bad things happen to us or to a loved one, e.g., sickness, loss of a loved one, relationship problems in our family. A relationship with a spouse, parent, child goes sour. We pray for help and it seems God is out to lunch. Mother Teresa wrote to a priest: "Jesus has a special love for you. As for me - the silence and the emptiness is so great-that I look and do not see-I listen and do not hear."
Of course, for other people any or all of the above circumstances may lead them to draw closer to God.
A crisis of any kind can be a danger or gift. The danger is that it may cause us to quit on God and church. The gift is that it may lead us back to God and church. Our response to the crisis can make us or break us.
Responding to the above forms of spiritual darkness
When bad things happen to good people, an enormous challenge is being issued even to people of strong faith.
Over the years, I have seen several responses:
What helps and hinders us as we try to embrace God's ways in difficult times?
Obstacles
1. Pride, a big ego, a high need to control. Insofar as these characteristics are at work in us, we will find it very hard to surrender and submit to God's strange ways. Unfortunately all too often, we may be blind to the extent of our pride, ego and our need for control.
2. Our inability to express anger with God about the painful stuff in our lives. A few of us may never need to express anger or disappointment at God, but it is very natural for the vast majority of us to feel this emotion. If we are upset with God and cannot express it in some way, there is a good chance we will remain stuck in our relationship with him.
3. Our refusal to seek help. If we tend to be very self-sufficient we will, most likley, have a difficult time reaching out for help. Very close to this may be our inability or unwillingness to be vulnerable with another. If being macho is our game, we will have a strong resistance to seeking help.
In your opinion what are some other obstacles . . .?
Helps
1. A high degree of spiritual poverty. The first and most important of the beatitudes says: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." (Matt 5:1-12). The poor in spirit are those people who know their need for God. As a result, they have no problem getting down on their knees and admitting their neediness for God's sufficient grace.
2. We are able to name and give expression to tough emotions, we may have around a particularly painful issue e.g., sadness, anger, jealously of others, depression. These are sometimes called the 'tough emotions' - the ones we may be most uncomfortable with and have a tough time dealing with. If we have developed a certain capacity for dealing with these emotions, we will have a huge advantage over people who have little or no capacity for dealing with such emotions.
3. Humility-This virtue, often called the foundation virtue of the spiritual life, enables us to remember and embrace the fact that God is the Creator and I am the creature, he is the Potter and I am the clay, he is the One in charge, he is the Pilot and Director of life's journey, not me.
4. A resilient nature that does not quit easily and is ready to do whatever it takes to turn the painful experiences of life into opportunities of growth.
5. A strong faith in God that helps us to believe in his presence even when he seems to be very absent.
What else helps us to make it through the tough times?
Spiritual Darkness sent to us by God
What are indications that a period of spiritual dryness or darkness may be sent to us by God?
If we are doing all of the above and yet our prayer runs dry, if we have little or no felt sense of God's presence we can probably assume that God is leading us into a time of spiritual purification.
Since none of us are perfect, all of us are constantly in need of spiritual purification. It will happen in this life or in the next (in purgatory), for nothing unclean shall enter heaven. In general, we need to be purified of any or all inordinate or excessive attachments we have. This includes not only attachments to sinful patterns of behavior e.g., greediness, selfishness, the need to control others, health, lust, pride etc. but also excessive attachments to persons, material things, to a particular pastime or passion and even spiritual experiences. All excessive attachments can become little or not so little gods in our lives-often becoming more important than God himself. We may or may not be aware of the excessive attachments in our lives, but God is. Slowly but surely he seeks to weer us off these attachments either in this life or in the next-so that he may have front and center place in our life.
I don't know why God would keep Mother Teresa in a state of spiritual darkness for 50 years. Who knows the mind of God? Mother Teresa did ask Jesus to ONLY share in his Passion. Her years of spiritual darkness was certainly a big sharing in his Passion-probably in a way she was not expecting. Lesson: Be careful what you ask for. Mother Teresa'a greatest legacy may not be her work amongst the poor, but her absolute fidelity to God during the 50+ years that he hid his face from her.
What can help us to not only survive but grow through desert periods?
Recently, I just started to read a book called The Fullfillment of all Desire by Ralph Martin. This 400+ page book draws generously from the writings of the saints to offer us guidance as we journey into the life of the Blessed Trinity.