Any distractions…
If you have never had any distractions you don’t know how to pray.
–Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
Rituals that neglect…
If you want tonight your spirit with God, you need to understand the true nature of spirituality. Some consider only appearances. They concentrate on penances, vigils, fasting, and other physical deprivations. Others indulge in long prayers, attend public services frequently, spend many hours in church, and take Communion as often as they can. These people are all misguided. These things are little more than the side effects of true piety. While these tools are useful in the spiritual life, they are not its essence… We can become so attached of these rituals that we completely neglect to notice any inner movement of our own hearts. Then we become filled with empty ideas and think that we have tasted the joys of paradise and the delight of angels. We think we have seen God but all we have seen is the devil’s decoy.
— Lawrence Scupoli (1529-1610)
Difficult to pray…
Since we find it difficult to pray because our souls are hard and dry and devotionless, then let us do as the parched earth does which yawns open and in a manner cries out for the rain. A humble recognition of our need is often more eloquent to the ears of God that many prayers.
–Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621)
With patient love…
With patient love, with self-abasement and humiliation, with the reiterated breathings of an ardent but peaceful affection, and with silence full of the most profound respect, you must await the return of the Beloved. Thus only you will demonstrate that it is Himself alone, and His good pleasure, that you seek; and not the selfish delights of your sensations.
–Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717)
Weariness of spirit…
If anyone of you be for a time cast down with weariness of spirit or afflicted with aridity of heart so that the torrent of devoted love seem to be dried up…. realize the Lord’s way. For a time, He will draw away from you that you may seek Him with greater ardor and, having sought, may find Him with greater joy and, having found, may hold Him with greater love and having held, may never let Him go.
–Blessed Jordan of Saxony (c. 1190-1237)
A journey called night…
We may say that there are three reasons for which this journey made by the soul to union with God is called night. The first has to do with the point from which the soul goes forth, for it has gradually to deprive itself of desire for all the worldly things which it possessed, by denying them to itself; the which denial and deprivation are, as it were, night to all the senses of man. The second reason has to do with the mean, or the road along which the soul must travel to this union — that is, faith, which is likewise as dark as night to the understanding. The third has to do with the point to which it travels — namely, God, Who, equally, is dark night to the soul in this life. These three nights must pass through the soul — or, rather, the soul must pass through them — in order that it may come to Divine union with God… And, when this third night is past, which is the complete accomplishment of the communication of God in the spirit, which is ordinarily wrought in great darkness of the soul, there then follows its union with the Bride, which is the Wisdom of God.
–Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)
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