Prayer and Desire
True prayer is only another name for the love of God.
Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him.
The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires.
To pray, then is to desire—but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.
Let him spend days in reciting prayers, in meditation or in inciting himself to pious exercises, he prays not once truly, if he really desire not the things he pretends to ask.
-- Francois Fenelon in his classic text, Spiritual Progress
Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him.
The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires.
To pray, then is to desire—but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.
Let him spend days in reciting prayers, in meditation or in inciting himself to pious exercises, he prays not once truly, if he really desire not the things he pretends to ask.
-- Francois Fenelon in his classic text, Spiritual Progress
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