True Prayer.
True prayer is only another name for the love of God. To pray is to desire—but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays. O how few there are who pray; for how few are they who desire what is truly good! Crosses, external and internal humiliation, renouncement of our own wills, the death of self, and the establishment of God’s throne upon the ruins of self-love,—these are indeed good. Not to desire these is not to pray; to desire them seriously, soberly, constantly, and with reference to all the details of life,—this is true prayer. Alas! how many souls full of self and of an imaginary desire for perfection in the midst of hosts of voluntary imperfections, have never yet uttered this true prayer of the heart! It is in reference to this that St. Augustine says, “He that loveth little, prayeth little; he that loveth much, prayeth much.”
Our intercourse with God resembles that with a friend; at first there are a thousand things to be told and as many to be asked; but after a time these diminish, while the pleasure of being together does not. Everything has been said, but the satisfaction of seeing each other, of feeling that one is near the other, of reposing in the enjoyment of a pure and sweet friendship, can be felt without conversation; the silence is eloquent and mutually understood. Each feels that the other is in perfect sympathy with him, and that their two hearts are incessantly poured out into each other, and constitute but one.
Those who have stations of importance to fill have generally so many indispensable duties to perform that, without the greatest care in the management of their time, none will be left to be alone with God. If they have ever so little inclination to dissipation, the hours that belong to God and their neighbor disappear altogether. We must be firm in observing our rules. This strictness seems excessive, but without it everything falls into confusion; we become dissipated, relaxed, and lose strength; we insensibly separate from God, surrender ourselves to all our pleasures, and only then begin to perceive that we have wandered when it is almost hopeless to think of endeavoring to return.