HE who purposes never more to offend God meets with many occasions of sin presented by the devil. He who resolves to desire no other consolation save in God, meets with the world, which offers to him new temporal pleasures: and it is a great hindrance to receiving the divine consolations to be unable to quit and give up former society, conversations, and recreations.

Therefore the spouse, that is, the soul already in grace, wishing to enter upon the spiritual life in the kisses of her divine Beloved, which are spiritual consolations, has great difficulty in detaching herself from the company of her companions, old conversations which offer her wine and perfumes, that is, temporal pleasures: where fore the soul languishing on account of the absence of her Beloved, and desiring to be united to Him by prayer, her companions seek to cheer her with wines and perfumes, bringing to her memory pleasures passed, in spite of which she begs: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. –Saint Francis de Sales Collection [16 Books]  ‘The Mystical Explanation of the Canticle of Canticles’

In the darkness . . . Lord, my God, who am I that you should forsake me?  The child of your love — and now become as the most hated one. The one — you have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer . . . Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.  Love — the word — it brings nothing.  I am told God lives in me — and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.  –Mother Teresa to her spiritual director.