Lose yourself completely in God, rest on his divine breast, adore him, and, if you cannot say a word, that’s even better. Remain continually in prayer, recollected in God. Love speaks little and expresses itself more in silence. One loving word is enough: “Father! Great Father! Goodness! Love!” One word is enough to hold a loving soul for a long time in prayer.
— Saint Paul of the Cross (1694-1775)
At other times, when I apply myself to prayer, I feel all my spirit and all my soul lift itself up without any care or effort of mine; and it continues as it were suspended and firmly fixed in God, as in its center and place of rest.
–Brother Lawrence (1614-1691)
Someone who is tied up cannot run. Just so, the spiritual intellect that is still a slave to its obsessive desires can never see the domain of spiritual prayer, because it is dragged all over the place by compulsive ideations and cannot achieve the necessary intellectual stillness.
–Evagrius Ponticus (345-399)
Sometimes people find themselves brightly illuminated and refreshed by God’s grace for a while, but then this grace may be taken away, and they can fall into depression and start grumbling and even give up dispiritedly instead of energetically renewing their prayers to call down again that assurance of salvation. Such behavior is like an ungrateful beggar taking alms at the palace door and then walking off indignantly because he was not invited in to dine with the king himself.
–Saint John of Karpathos (Seventh Century)
Prayer is the application of the heart to God, and the internal exercise of love.
–Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717)
Prayer is the guide to perfection and the sovereign good; it delivers us from every vice, and obtains every virtue; for the one great means to become perfect, is to walk in the presence of God.
–Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717)
