Sudden Joy and Sudden Gloom

So we asked the blessed Daniel why it was that, as we sat in our cells, we were sometimes filled with the greatest gladness of heart, together with a delight beyond words and an abundance of the holiest feelings, so great that feeling itself, let alone speech, could not keep pace with it. Pure prayers came readily, and the mind, filled with spiritual fruits, could feel that its petitions rose lightly and powerfully to God, even when it prayed in sleep. And again, why it was that for no reason we were suddenly filled with the deepest grief and weighed down with an unreasonable depression. Not only did we feel overcome by these feelings ourselves, but our cell grew dreadful to us, reading went stale, and even our prayers were offered unsteadily and vaguely, almost as if we were drunk. While we groaned and struggled to get back our former state, our mind could not do it. The more earnestly it tried to fix its gaze on God again, the more violently it was carried off into wandering thoughts by shifting distractions. It was so completely stripped of all spiritual fruit that it could not be roused from this deadly sleep even by the desire of the kingdom of heaven or by the fear of hell set before it. To this he replied as follows. [a]