# Painful Prayer ## Interior Castle Glossary The Interior Castle: Study Edition / Second Edition, Revised includes Full Text of St. Teresa of Avila's Work, Translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD ### Painful Prayer The soul is in total dryness; no consolation is admitted into its interior. It seems to it that God is far away and that it has never been mindful of him and never will be. Its prayer becomes a torment to it. It feels rejected by God and an unbearable interior oppression. Its intellect is so darkened that it becomes incapable of seeing the truth and believes whatever foolish things the imagination represents to it. Books are of no help because it doesn’t understand what it reads; the intellect is incapable of understanding. The only remedy is to wait for the mercy of God. See also: [[pursuits-texts/05-reference/01-glossary/prayer|Prayer]] [[prayer-ascetical|Ascetical Prayer]] [[prayer-mystical|Mystical Prayer]] [[prayer-painful|Painful Prayer]]