What do you do where you hit the point where everything spiritual feels dead to you?

[Vico]

What do you do when spirituality just starts to feel dead? Like, not that you don’t believe things, but that everything just feels like a chore and you don’t feel like you’re getting anything from any sort of spiritual activity? It’s very hard to focus and keep my mind from wandering during prayers or study, and I often find myself resenting taking time out for them simply because I feel that I have almost stared blankly at a page or a set of beads for a few minutes (not for lack of trying).

I go to Mass every week, I go to confession every 1-2 months (it’s kind of hard with my schedule, because I have to arrange for it 2-3 weeks out). I was praying the liturgy of the hours for a while but I stopped because I was finding myself distracted and merely annoyed with it rather than gaining anything.

Does this describe it (From Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross):

When they are going about these spiritual exercises with the greatest delight and pleasure, and when they believe that the sun of Divine favour is shining most brightly upon them, God turns all this light of theirs into darkness, and shuts against them the door and the source of the sweet spiritual water which they were tasting in God whensoever and for as long as they desired. (For, as they were weak and tender, there was no door closed to them, as Saint John says in the Apocalypse, iii, 8). And thus He leaves them so completely in the dark that they know not whither to go with their sensible imagination and meditation; for they cannot advance a step in meditation, as they were wont to do afore time, their inward senses being submerged in this night, and left with such dryness that not only do they experience no pleasure and consolation in the spiritual things and good exercises wherein they were wont to find their delights and pleasures, but instead, on the contrary, they find insipidity and bitterness in the said things. For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.

carmelitemonks.org/Vocation/DarkNight-StJohnoftheCross.pdf

 

[Logical2]

You know how sometimes meds can be, too. It’s always a tradeoff - you get one thing from them, but you don’t get another, or you give up one benefit to be free from another side effect. It’s never quite as good as just not having the disorder.

 

[Logical2]

What do you do when spirituality just starts to feel dead? Like, not that you don’t believe things, but that everything just feels like a chore and you don’t feel like you’re getting anything from any sort of spiritual activity? It’s very hard to focus and keep my mind from wandering during prayers or study, and I often find myself resenting taking time out for them simply because I feel that I have almost stared blankly at a page or a set of beads for a few minutes (not for lack of trying).

I go to Mass every week, I go to confession every 1-2 months (it’s kind of hard with my schedule, because I have to arrange for it 2-3 weeks out). I was praying the liturgy of the hours for a while but I stopped because I was finding myself distracted and merely annoyed with it rather than gaining anything.

This is general my a clue that you are NOT born again and activated by the holy spirit. If you read 1 cor. Chapter 2 Paul saint he came with the power of the holy spirit. The only division in the catholic church in the charasmetic fellowship. Other wise it’s just a religious ceremony. What signs and wonders have you seen occurring? If you have not seen any healed. Delivered or prophetic. With edification exoration and comfort. Then you haven’t experience the Gospel

 

[DarkLight]

This is general my a clue that you are NOT born again and activated by the holy spirit. If you read 1 cor. Chapter 2 Paul saint he came with the power of the holy spirit. The only division in the catholic church in the charasmetic fellowship. Other wise it’s just a religious ceremony. What signs and wonders have you seen occurring? If you have not seen any healed. Delivered or prophetic. With edification exoration and comfort. Then you haven’t experience the Gospel

One of those does not follow from the other, unless you’re adding something that is in neither Scripture nor Sacred Tradition.

What more wonder do we need when the Eucharist is already present?

 

[Dorothy]

One of those does not follow from the other, unless you’re adding something that is in neither Scripture nor Sacred Tradition.

What more wonder do we need when the Eucharist is already present?

Alleluia! He did not leave us orphans.

Peace,

Dorothy