I’d love to read the sources. Anyone who reads the works lot of extraordinary faith are familiar with a “spirtual dryness” during which the holy people experience a lack of sensory awareness of God’s presence. This is not a lack of faith, but a faith that is so strong it needn’t the constant reminder of sensation. St. Therese Lisieux (”the Little Flower”) was known for such ecstasy during prayer that she seemed to float above the ground. Yet in her very public writings which have become the most-read writings since the Bible and which have inspired so many, she writes of spiritual dryness which would devestate me.
I believe — and I hope — that this is what Mother Therese is writing of, and that she has been taken out of context. Some of St. Therese’s writings, out of context, certainly could be sensationalized in terrible ways.
It is, Dangus. I have heard others comment on her own “dark night of the soul,” a very special grace given by God. But then, some Christians will forget that even Christ asked, “My God, my God. Why has thou abandoned me?”