The state of a lukewarm soul is not to be confused with aridity in acts of piety produced at times by tiredness or sickness, or by the loss of sensitive enthusiasm. In these cases, in spite of the dryness, the will is firm in the good. The soul knows that it is heading directly to Christ, even if it is passing through a rocky area where it cannot find a single fountain and the stones are hurting its legs. But it knows where the summit is, and goes straight there, in spite of fatigue and thirst and the bad ground on which it treads.
In aridity, even if the soul has no feeling and it seems laborious to deal with God, true devotion remains, which St. Thomas Aquinas defines as the "determined will to give oneself to all that pertains to the service of God". This "determined will" becomes weak in a state of lukewarmness: "I have it against you," says the Lord, "that you have lost the fervor of your first charity,5 that you have slackened, that you no longer love me as before. The person who maintains prayer with commitment even in times of aridity, of lack of sentiment, finds herself perhaps like someone who draws water from a well, bucket by bucket: one ejaculation and another, an act of atonement.... It is laborious and it costs effort, but it draws water. In lukewarmness, on the other hand, the imagination runs wild, voluntary distractions are not rejected with determination, and prayer is practically abandoned with the excuse that it does not bear fruit. However, true dealings with God, even with aridity, if the Lord permits it, are always full of fruit, in any circumstance, if there is an upright and determined will to be with Him.
We must remember now, in the presence of God, that true piety is not a matter of sentiment, although sensitive affections are good and can be of great help in prayer, and in the whole interior life, because they are an important part of human nature, as God created it. But they should not occupy the first place in piety; they are not the principal part of our relations with the Lord. Sentiment is an aid and nothing more, because the essence of piety is not sentiment, but the determined will to serve God, independently of moods, so changeable, and of any other circumstance. In piety, we must not let ourselves be guided by sentiment but by intelligence, enlightened and aided by faith. "To be guided by sentiment is to give the management of the house to the servant and to make the master abdicate. It is not the sentiment that is bad, but the importance that is given to it...".
The lukewarmness is sterile, the salt is only good to be thrown out and trampled by people. On the contrary, dryness can be a positive sign that the Lord desires to purify that soul.
Hablar con Dios