If it happens that someone cannot weep, a single word from a contrite heart is enough for God. And if someone would lose the use of his tongue, God would be well pleased with the moaning of his heart.
–Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
We must not give up praying and asking because we do not get what we ask all at once.
— Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595)
Before prayer, endeavor to realize whose Presence you are approaching, and to whom you are about to speak. We can never fully understand how we ought to behave towards God, before whom the angels tremble.
–Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
If He gives me some task I am content and I thank Him. If he gives me nothing, I still thank Him. Since I do not deserve to receive anything more than that, and then I tell God everything that is in my heart. I tell him about my pains and my joys, and then I listen. If you listen, God will also speak to you. For with the good Lord, you have to both speak and listen. God always speaks to you when you approach him plainly and simply.
–Saint Catherine Laboure (1806-1876)
Prayer is… a conversation with God. Though whispering, consequently, and not opening the lips, we speak in silence, yet we cry inwardly. For God hears continually the whole inward conversation.
–Saint Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215)
Being useless and silent in the presence of God belongs to the core of all prayer. In the beginning, we often hear our own unruly inner noises more loudly than God’s voice. This is at times very hard to tolerate. But slowly, very slowly, we discover that the silent time makes us quiet and deepens our awareness of ourselves and God. Then, very soon, we start to miss these moments when we are deprived of them, and before we are fully aware of it, an inner momentum has developed that draws us more and more into silence and closer to that still point where God speaks to us.
–Henri Nouwen (1932–1996)
