"Prayer, considered as petition, consists
entirely in expressing to God some desire in order that He may hear it
favorably; a real desire is, therefore, its primary and essential condition;
without this, we are merely moving the lips, going through a form of words
which is not the expression of our will; and thus our prayer is only an
appearance without reality. The way, then, to excite ourselves to pray, to put
life and fervor into our prayer, and to make of it a cry which, breaking forth
from the depths of the soul, penetrates even to heaven, is to conceive the real
desire mentioned above, to excite it, to cherish it; for the fervor of our
prayer will be in proportion to the strength of the desire we have to be heard;
just as what we have but little at heart we ask for only in a half-hearted way,
if even we ask it at all; so what we desire with our whole soul we ask for with
words of fire, and plead for it before God with an eloquence that is very
real."
— Rev. Dom Lehody, The Ways of Mental Prayer, p.
4-5
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