On Prayer and the Contemplate Life

The motive power of a moving principle is virtually discoverable in the movements of the things it sets in motion.

Yet the very giving ourselves to prayer has the effect of soothing our minds and purifying them; it makes us more fit to receive the Divine gifts which are spiritually poured out upon us.

Celal Bayar This is contrary to the teaching of the Apostle: While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal: but the things which are not seen as eternal.

This tooth he carried about with him for a long time as a reminder of an act of Divine loving-kindness such as he was anxious not to forget, for forgetfulness is the mother of ingratitude; he wished it to move him to still greater confidence in the power of prayer which had on that occasion been so quickly heard.

S. Augustine remarks: “To be seen by men is not wrong, but to do things to be seen by men.”

There is a threshold species of attention which may find place in our vocal prayer: one by which a man attends to the words he recites, another by which he attends to the meaning of the words; and a thing by which he attends to the end of all prayer and to the object for which he is praying.

Where as the intellect of the human soul, on the contrary, acquires intelligible trust from the things of sense, and understands it by the discursive action of the reason.