In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.
–Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997)
Prayer begins with a return to the heart, finding one’s deepest center, awakening the profound depths of our being in the presence of God who is the source of our being and of our life.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
Banish, therefore, from your heart the distractions of earth and turn your eyes to spiritual joys, that you may learn at last to rest in the light of the contemplation of God.
–Saint Albert the Great (c. 1206-1280)
To worship God in spirit and truth means to worship God as we ought to worship Him. God is Spirit, so we must worship Him in spirit and truth, that is, by a humble and true adoration of spirit in the depth and center of our souls. God alone can see this worship; we can repeat it so often that in the end it becomes as if it were natural to us, and as if God were one with our souls, and our souls one with Him.
–Brother Lawrence (1614-1691)
The great method of prayer is to have none. If in going to prayer one can form in oneself a pure capacity for receiving the spirit of God, that will suffice for all method.
–Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641)
From the moment you start praying, raise your heart upward and turn your eyes downward. Come to focus in your innermost self and there pray in secret to your Heavenly Father.
–Saint Aphrahat the Persian (270-345)
