I Pass on now to Mental pain which is a condition of the soul, and yet I do not wish to put this under the category of actual Spiritual Pain, because I wish to reserve for that category the pain which is entirely due to the actual intervention of God directly, and not due to the ‘growing pains’ of the soul.

We are probing deeper now into the mystery of pain, probing deeper, and at the same time, paradoxically, mounting higher. I speak of the condition of the soul caused by the mental pain of aridity, isolation, desolation, and the insatiable hunger of the soul for God.

Aridity is dryness in the life of the spirit. It sometimes seems as if the very colour, and music, of prayer were dead and silent. We pray, and our very words seem meaningless and hollow; there seems no response from God. We may be even utterly bored and unable to concentrate; vocal prayer seems meaningless, like speaking to a blank wall; mental prayer is impossible. It is indeed as if all the colour of life had turned grey, and all the music was mute. ‘Surely’, the wretched bodies out, ‘I must have sinned very greatly, have displeased God in some terrible way.’