“We might expect that the nearer God comes to an individual man or woman, the more that person would experience a kind of sustained bliss, or at least some kind of intense emotional rapture. But such 'glorious bewilderment' is not, in fact, all that common in the Christian life. It is true that St. Teresa of Avila — and with her, a considerable number of other saints and mystics — refer on occasion to a stage in prayer in which the soul is so bewildered by the joy of love it hardly knows what to say or do. 'It cannot tell,' Teresa writes, 'whether to speak or be silent, whether to laugh or weep. It is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired, and to the soul a fulfillment most full of delight.' But such a state of rapture, if it occurs at all, occurs generally at a very advanced stage in the spiritual life.
“What happens, in contrast, in the early or beginning stages, is that the warmth of God’s love, being so close, stirs up in our hearts all kinds of buried hurts and resentments and weaknesses. St. John of the Cross, Teresa’s fellow Carmelite and mystic, explains: 'All the soul’s infirmities are brought to light; they are set before its eyes to be felt and healed. Now with the light and heat of the divine fire, it sees and feels those weaknesses and miseries which previously resided within it, hidden and unfelt.' In practice, therefore, at least in the early stages, instead of beaming with a newfound spirituality, we very quickly begin to appear like a damp log of wood that has been placed in a fire. Before we ourselves can catch fire with love, we begin first, according to John of the Cross, to 'sweat and smoke and sputter.' ”
