Oh, men and women, pray through; pray through! Do not just begin to pray and pray a little while and throw up your hands and quit; but pray and pray and pray until God bends the heavens and comes down.
Interpretation
Persistent prayer is essential for experiencing divine intervention.
This quote emphasizes the importance of perseverance in prayer, encouraging believers not to give up after a brief effort but to continue seeking God with fervor until they see results. The call to 'pray through' suggests that true faith requires sustained commitment and determination, appealing to the idea that divine help comes to those who diligently pursue it.
In practice
During a church service when discussing the power of prayer.
Be much alone with God, and take time to get thoroughly acquainted. Converse over everything with Him. Unburden yourself wholly -every thought, feeling, wish, plan, doubt- to Him...He wants not merely to be on good terms with you, but to be intimate.
O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.
Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.
The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love.
The rewards of life and devotion to God are love and inner rapture, and the capacity to receive the light of God.
Prayer, as a means of drawing ever new strength from Christ, is concretely and urgently needed.
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