Spiritual Dryness, Part II

This is Part II, so go read Part I first if you’re interested.

THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN LOVE AND EMOTION.

You don’t need warm fuzzies to love someone, and sometimes you get warm fuzzies when you don’t actually love someone. One of the greatest mistakes we make, especially at our age, is to assume that whenever we feel a great warmness toward someone or something it means that we love them, and when we don’t feel that burning enthusiasm and obsessive desire it means we don’t.

Emotions aren’t always bad. They can motivate us, inspire us, encourage us and make us do things that we might not be able to do without them. But they are by nature fleeting and unstable. Our relationship with God is supposed to be permanent and hopefully unchanging, and by building our relationship on emotions, we are already on a very unstable foundation. Instead, our relationship should be founded on love.

Remember, love is not an adjective, it is a verb. (I read that somewhere, but I don’t remember where, so forgive me.) Love doesn’t describe a feeling, love is an action. And in this case, love is a reaching out towards God even when we don’t feel his presence in our lives. Love is an act of will, not an act of feeling. We choose to love.

“[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8).

One of the first steps in combating Spiritual Dryness, therefore, is to understand that your relationship with Him does not depend on how you are feeling at the time. Tell God that you have chosen to love Him no matter what, and stick with that. Remind yourself that you can love God without feeling it, and that just because you don’t feel like God is near, that doesn’t mean He isn’t.

Pray, like St. Teresa of Avila:

“I do not need Your gifts to make me love You, for even if I should have no help of hope at all of all the things I do hope for, I would still love You with that very same love. Amen.”

Part III coming soon, although not as soon as Part II came. I've got to go get some stuff accomplished before I do!