Happy are those who are able to pray. It is thus that Christians solicit grace.
It is easy to fall on one’s knees; but to be able to pray one must already possess that grace which one implores. It is so great a gift, the gift of prayer, that it is almost indelicate to desire anything else from it.
To drink is a small matter. To be thirsty is everything.
Why do the Christians, who counsel us to pray in order to obtain grace, never tell us what we must do in order to be able to pray? It is not for nothing, nevertheless, that they arrange the play of light and shade through their stained-glass windows, the odor of stones and incense, the silence of the vaults and the propitiatory sights of the organ, all those harmonious snares set for the wandering prayer.
As for me, I shall take a staff and go out seeking the solitude of the world. If this world is a city street at dawn,—that will do! A misty dock, its outline broken by rails and masts,—that will do! A sunken road, lighted by the flowering broom,—that will do! The court of a barrack, the muddy enclosure of a prison-camp, oh! pitiful as it may seem to me, may it still seem good!
If I can walk, straight before me or far and wide, I can pray. If I can see a scrap of the sky, I can pray. And with all nature offered to my soul, I can pray, I can pray in spite of everything and as if without willing it. I must see that osier-bed, or the radiant awning of that wagon, or the image of the bridge in the water. I must hear the moaning of those interlaced branches; then I am able to feel myself bathed in grace.
Grace! It is indeed the fleeting consciousness man has of his divinity.
And now, now especially, and more than ever, we say to ourselves, man must have faith in his divinity!