Know that the Lord is building your perfection on the solid basis of your will to love Him. You will learn that you do not need His consolations nor to look for them. You need Him. And now I feel nothing. A desert is an arid place with no water or place of refreshment.
Spiritual aridity is more than the lack of all sensible and spiritual consolations.
In spiritual aridity, prayer grows wearisome, irksome, endless. Faith and trust seem dormant. Aridity is painful. However, it is one of God's ways of detaching us from all created things, including joy in our devotion, so that we may learn to love God for His sake alone. Aridity becomes a building block of our spiritual edifice when it teaches us humility.