Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. We must always remember this. The actual words matter less.
Interpretation
Prayer is about connecting with God rather than the specific words used.
This quote emphasizes that the essence of prayer lies in the intention and focus of one's mind towards God, rather than the specific language or formulas employed. It serves as a reminder that a genuine connection in prayer is more important than the exact phrasing of the prayers we recite.
In practice
In a sermon, to explain the importance of intention in prayer.
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
To keep me from sin and straying from Him, God has used devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. My life vows destined to be spent in the light irradiating from the tabernacle, and it is to the Heart of Jesus that I dare go for the solution of all my problems
Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.
The Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular.
Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.
I am able to follow my own death step by step. Now I move softly towards the end.
Do not sit down and try to pump up repentance from the dry well of a corrupt nature. It is contrary to the laws of your mind to suppose that you can force your soul into that gracious state. Take your heart in prayer to Him who understands it and say, "Lord, cleanse it. Lord, renew it. Lord, work repentance in it." The more you try to produce penitent emotions in yourself, the more you will be disappointed. However, if you believingly think of Jesus dying for you, repentance will burst forth.
Give yourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. If you do not pray, God will probably lay you aside from your ministry, as He did me, to teach you to pray.
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.
In centering prayer, the sacred word is not the object of the attention but rather the expression of the intention of the will.
"My aim is to institute perpetual adoration," spoke St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, Franciscan priest and founder of the Knights of the Immaculata. For he said that this is "the most important activity," and "if half of the Brothers would work, and the other half pray, this would not require too much."
It is not because we are drawn to prayer that we first begin to pray; more often, we have to begin prayer, and then the taste and the desire for it come.
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