This reminds me of something, and I'd like to touch on about what St John of the Cross wrote concerning what many Christians like to call the Dark Night of the Soul.
When we first come to believe, we are like children. Everything is great. We feel the Spirit within us so profoundly, and it is as if God's love is like a warm blanket around us. We take such great delight in prayer, feeling drawn to it so constantly that to be away from it too long causes us to feel emptiness. We pray with fervent love and at great frequency, we want nothing but to contemplate on God and his love. Prayer becomes a very rewarding experience. God allows us to feel this way to interest us, knowing that we truly need it, as an infant need to be held by its mother.
Then we find later that it is not often so easy to pray. We become a little more easily distracted. We don't pray as long or as often as we once did. We no longer desire only to be in prayer as we once did. Our prayers often don't seem to be answered as we think they should. The joy in praying is not as strong. We allow other things to come between us and God again like we did before we knew Him, but we still love him and long to be with him. This is where we begin to grow up in the faith...this is God urging us to continue despite the reward.
Then there is the Dark Night. Prayer is almost impossible. There is deep spiritual dryness here. We don't get joy out of prayer like we used to. We can't concentrate as we would like. Perhaps we feel ignored by God, as if he has abandoned us. We don't feel that intense warmth in our hearts. We are alone, it seems, as in a dark night. This is God acting like a mother who is trying to wean her child from breastmilk. For the weak, prayer will be abandoned all together. Faith with falter and sometimes fail, until God seeing a child not ready to grow up must once more entice the believer with those feelings of warmth. For someone who is more mature in their faith, they will continue to pray ardently despite not feeling as close to God as in those first days. This is the meaning of faith. Trusting that God has not abandoned you, trusting that he is there, trusting that he still hears and answers prayers. Once God has seen a sufficient example of this maturity of faith, then the believer may once more feel that warmth, desire, and love; having passed through the Dark Night.
