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Prayer is a repose, a relaxation. One must come in total simplicity to the One whom one loves, holding oneself near to Him as a small child in its mother’s arms, allowing one’s heart to go out ...

I already told you elsewhere that sometimes the devil gives us great desires so that we will avoid setting ourselves to the task at hand, serving our Lord in possible things, and instead be content with having desired the impossible. Apart from the fact that by prayer you will be helping greatly, you need not be desiring to benefit the whole world but must concentrate on those who are in your company, and thus your deed will be greater since you are more obliged toward them.

Just as we cannot stop the movement of the heavens, but they proceed in rapid motion, so neither can we stop our mind; and then the faculties of the soul go with it, and we think we are lost and have wasted the time spent before God. But the soul is perhaps completely joined with Him in the dwelling places very close to the center while the mind is on the outskirts of the castle suffering from a thousand wild and poisonous beasts, and meriting by this suffering. As a result we should not be disturbed; nor should we abandon prayer, which is what the devil wants us to do. For the most part all the trials and disturbances come from our not understanding ourselves.

The most potent and acceptable prayer is the prayer that leaves the best effects. I don't mean it must immediately fill the soul with desire . . . The best effects are those that are followed up by actions...when the soul not only desires the honor of God, but really strives for it.

A soul united to Jesus and identified with him can do everything. It seems to me that this can be reached only by prayer.

...some books on prayer tell us where one must seek God. Within oneself, very clearly, is the best place to look.

Our created essence cries out to rejoin its Principle. The Word, the Splendour of the Father, is the eternal prototype on which creatures are designed on the day of their creation. That is why God wills that, having been freed from what is purely of self, we shall stretch out our arms … and possess Him …this contemplation opens up to the soul prospects before unhoped for.

To obtain an answer to the requests we bear in our hearts, there is no better means than to concentrate the strength of our prayer upon what is more pleasing to God.

When I feel nothing, when I am incapable of praying or practicing virtue, then is the moment to look for small occasions, nothings that give Jesus pleasure...a smile or a friendly word, when I would much prefer to say nothing at all.

Sometimes when I am in such a state of spiritual dryness that not a single good thought occurs to me, I say very slowly the "Our Father," or the "Hail Mary," and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself.

When we have prayed to the Blessed Virgin and she has not given us what we asked for, we should let her do what she pleases, without insisting on our request; and after that let us not worry any more about it.

To remain in prayer without obtaining any advantage is not lost time, but a season of great gain, because then we labor without interest, and only for the glory of God. And though at first it may seem as if we labored in vain, it is not so; but it is like what happens to sons who work on their father's estate, and who, though at night they receive not wages for the day's work, yet at the end of the year they receive everything.