“THOSE prayers quickly ascend to God which the merits of our works urge upon God.”
(St. Cyprian: On the Lord’s Prayer, 33.)
“OUR Father, Who hast exhorted us to pray, Who also bringest about What Thou hast asked of us; since we live better when we pray to Thee and are better: hear me as I tremble in this darkness and reach out Thy hand to me. Hold Thy light before me and recall me from my strayings, that with Thee as my guide I may return to myself and to Thee. Amen.”
(St. Augustine: Soliloquies, 2, 6, 9.)
“NOR should we imagine, as some do, that prolonged prayer is the same thing as ‘much-speaking’; many words are one thing; long-continued feelings of devotion quite another.”
(St. Augustine: Letters 130. (To Proba on prayer))
“HE who asks of God in faith things needful for this life is sometimes mercifully heard and sometimes mercifully not heard. For the Physician knows better than the patient what will avail for the sick man.”
(St. Prosper of Aquitaine: Sententiae ex Augustino delibatae, 212.)
“IN a single day I have prayed as many as a hundred times, and in the night almost as often.”
(St. Patrick: Confessio.)
“BUT before all things it is good to begin with prayer, as thereby giving ourselves up to and uniting ourselves with God.”
(Pseudo-Dionysius: On the Divine Names, 6, 1.)
“MEN by petitioning may merit to receive what almighty God arranged before the ages to give them.”
(Pope St. Gregory I: Morals, 35, 21.)