God is not aloof, in the sense that he would be up there in heaven and not aware of or not caring about us human beings. This belief is one of the tenets of what came to be called Deism.
Deism rejects revelation as a source of knowledge of God, affirming rather that we can know God only through the natural world. It accepts the existence of God, but often sees God as an impersonal, incomprehensible being who does not intervene in the universe after creating it. He is simply aloof from what happens here below. Deism became popular and grew out of the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of the American founding fathers were Deists, among them Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
But God is not aloof. Rather, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). In the incarnation of the Son of God, God did not remain “up there” but rather came “down here”, to live among us, to share our joys and sufferings, to teach us the way to heaven, and to die on the Cross to open up that way.
What is more, Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, entered into a personal relationship with many individuals: the apostles, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, Nicodemus, a Samaritan woman at the well, and so many more. He suffered and died for every single individual who will ever live. He cares about everyone. And he cares about you.
Far from being aloof, God is constantly watching over us in his loving providence. The Catechism teaches, quoting the first Vatican Council: “By his providence, God protects and governs all things which he has made, ‘reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well.’ For ‘all are open and laid bare to his eyes,’ even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures” (CCC 302; Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 1).
The Catechism goes on: “The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history” (CCC 303). “Jesus asks for childlike abandonment to the providence of our heavenly Father who takes care of his children’s smallest needs” (CCC 305).
What, then, should someone do when they find it difficult to connect with God and they feel as if he weren’t there for them? In a person who usually has strong faith, this situation is known as spiritual dryness. The person wants to pray and does pray, but experiences no consolations or signs that God is listening to them and answering their prayers. They are spiritually dry.
This is an experience that many people go through from time to time. Even the saints have had it, among them St John of the Cross, St Therese of Lisieux, St Faustina and St Josemaria Escrivá. One of the most extraordinary cases in recent times was St Teresa of Calcutta, who had spiritual desolation, a “dark night of the soul”, for the last fifty years of her life. She described “untold darkness” and a “continual longing for God” to her spiritual director Fr. Joseph Neuner. “The place of God in my soul is blank. There is no God in me” she wrote to him.
Yet, Mother Teresa and all the saints continued to pray through those dark periods. This is what we should all do. It is comforting if we receive consolations in our prayer, but they add nothing to the value of our prayer. In fact, anyone will pray if they receive consolations, but only a saint will continue to pray without them. We can tell God we love him, even when we do not feel this love. If we persevere in praying in this way, we will usually come out of our spiritual dryness and return to a state in which we feel God present. And even if we don’t, let us continue praying anyway.