The spiritual masters have only spoken of three tendencies: distraction, dryness, and aridity. However, observation of life has brought me to “discover” another tendency, possibly worse than the ones already mentioned, found very often in our day: spiritual atrophy.
The following happens to the muscles: when they are not used, they lose their tenor and elasticity. They do not die but they lose their vitality. They are no longer able to develop strength, lift weights, run. They become atrophied. It is not death, but rather death’s front porch.
Immobility is a sign of death and causes it. If life stops being motion, it ceases to be life: the tendons harden and are overcome with rigidity. A plant, if not watered or fertilized, dries out, loses strength, and slowly fails, due to its impending death.
The same thing happens to many people. For years, they did not make an orderly, methodical, patient, and persevering efforts to enter into frequent and profound communication with the Lord. For a long time, they made sporadic and superficial attempts at prayer. They invented a thousand rationalizations to justify this situation: the one who works is already praying; God is to be found among the people. … In this way, they appeased their consciences, at least to a certain degree.
They substituted prayer for reflection, and meditation for shared conversation. Little by little, they were losing the sense of God and the desire for prayer. Within themselves, this is what happened: those energies which the mystics call potentials or faculties, not being used, were slowly losing elasticity. Losing their strength, they were used less and less. Not being used, they were entering a counter-productive course leading to extinction
These energies are the ties that unite the soul with God, that is the bridge through which the affective current comes and goes clothed in the intimacy that exists between the soul and God. When these deep energies are extinguished the communication with the Lord is interrupted. Thus the familiarity with Him is lost. Each time God becomes more distant, vaporous and inexistent. And, of course, in these circumstances nobody wants to pray.
Jesus says, it is necessary to enter into a solitary room, closing doors and windows in order to encounter the Father. In reference to this, Saint John of the Cross will warns us using insuperable words that the pre-existing condition in order to have an encounter alone with the Father is this: “the quiet night, the silent music, the resounding solitude and the banquet that refreshes and enamors.”
Life with God is a convergence between grace and nature. Grace can do miracles, and does it frequently, but usually grace adapts itself to nature and leans on her. To prepare nature is our task, our contribution. Because a grain will not grow if the earth is not tilled and aired we need to prepare the nature to be a recipient to contain the mystery of grace.
Based on the book “Sensing Your Hidden Presence” and “God Within” from F. Ignacio Larrañaga
