Chapter 153

Why Coldness Toward Prayer Happens

The coldness you speak of comes either from spiritual exhaustion, or from the fact that the soul has absorbed too much that is merely psychological (see in the book “What is Spiritual Life”18 about this), or from too much ease and comfort given to the body, or from presumption and other passions that have troubled and occupied the soul. All such things are contrary to spiritual life, in which prayer is queen; it muddies and blocks the spring of prayer. But sometimes it comes by God’s permission, and by the withdrawal of grace. When your soul burns with zeal, this is the action of grace, God’s touch upon your soul. It happens that when this lasts a long time, the soul begins to think that it is very skilled at praying, forgetting that the liveliness of prayer is not its own doing, but the work of God’s grace, present within us. For such thinking, grace departs and leaves the soul alone, and by itself it is immobile toward the spiritual – hence the coldness and sloth.

How should you proceed then? The main thing is to try to remove the causes of such a state. And then act as you are acting: fulfill your rule despite sluggishness, striving both to gather your thoughts and to kindle your feelings toward God. Through patience and humility grace will return—and at once it will disperse sluggishness, as the wind dispels fog.

(Letter 947. Vol. 6, pp. 22–23)