Cardinal Ratzinger said, referring to the dark night of faith St. Therese endured in the last months of her life: “When you sense God is absent, it is not that He has withdrawn His presence from you. It is, rather, that He is present to you now in a new form: under the form of yearning. And yearning stretches your capacity for love.”

Pray for this grace of yearning that leads to greater love, when you experience the sense of God's absence. God is never absent, because he loves us so much. But he allows us to experience a sense of absence, so that our desire for him can grow in a deeper and more fulfilling way. It is the yearning of the heart that seeks the good, the perfect and the beautiful. Things can't fulfill this deeper longing, only the source of life and love can. God doesn't want us to settle for the less when we can have the more. It was only the love for the Father that enable Jesus to endure the cruel sufferings of crucifixion for our sake. His cry: "I thirst" was an expression of this yearning for the Father. Thirst for the Lord. Seek the Lord with your whole heart until the moment you will see him face to face. Then your yearnings will be fulfilled.