Quotes About Prayer

Thomas Merton

JMJT February 1, 1942. Septuagesima.

Let there be a place somewhere in which you can breathe naturally, quietly, and not have to take your breath in continuous short gasps. A place where your mind can be idle, and forget its concerns, descend into silence, and worship the Father in secret.

If we are to pray well, we too must discover the Lord to whom we speak, and if we use the Psalms in our prayer we will stand a better chance of sharing in the discovery which lies hidden in their words for all generations. For God has willed to make Himself known to us in the mystery of the Psalms.

thousands of Catholics everywhere, have the consummate audacity to weep and complain because God does not hear their prayers for peace, when they have neglected not only His will, but the ordinary dictates of natural reason and prudence, and let their children grow up according to the standards of a civilization of hyenas.

PRAYER and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

Thus, just about the time when I most needed it, I did acquire a little natural faith, and found many occasions of praying and lifting up my mind to God.

But there is nothing to prevent a layman from taking just one Psalm a day, for instance in his night prayers, and reciting it thoughtfully, pausing to meditate on the lines which have the deepest meaning for him.

Nourished by the Sacraments and formed by the prayer and teaching of the Church, we need seek nothing but the particular place willed for us by God within the Church. When we find that place, our life and our prayer both at once become extremely simple.

You pray and suffer and hang on and give things up and hope and sweat, and the varying contours of the struggle work out the shape of your liberty. When it ends, and when you have a good habit to work with, do not forget the moments of the battle when you were wounded and disarmed and helpless. Do not forget that, for all your efforts, you only won because of God, Who did the fighting in you.

At this deep level of personal myth and innate constitution, spirituality and psychology overlap and conjoin. For that reason, paying close attention to dreams aids any spiritual activity, keeping it grounded and in contact with the elements that have shaped you. Dream work becomes as important as meditation, quiet reading, and prayer, and fits tightly into a developed spiritual way of life.

We cannot judge our prayer...by how we feel when we pray, but rather by how we are loving when we live.

In order to pin the blame for declining SAT scores on the Supreme Court's school prayer decisions, Barton also has to overlook the massive changes in American education at the time. Many of them involved the expansion of the school systems to include previously excluded and disadvantaged groups of people, which predictably resulted in a significant increase in the number of test-takers and a decrease in average scores.

Pray for our CEF worker who has been accused of inappropriate behavior with the children," she finally says in an agitated voice. "If these accusations are allowed to continue, Lord, it could devastate the man, and his family, and the ministry.

Also in Texas, Allen Beck, the founder of Advantage Academy, a four-campus charter school funded by taxpayers, has said he established the schools in order to bring "the Bible, prayer, and patriotism back into the public school system.

Purring is not so different from praying. To a tree, a cat's purr is one of the purest of all prayers, for in it lies a whole mixture of gratitude and longing, the twin ingredients of every prayer.

you have often said, it is not about religion; it is about a relationship with God.

When I was little, I asked my mom to help me memorize Matthew 7:7: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

Maybe the forest is a prayer tonight, bent under the weight of all that winter, the whole world on its knees. Or maybe the prayer is the hush. Could I pray this way, letting the night settle onto my thoughts like snow on my shoulders, that gently? Hush. My snowshoes shuffle through the drifts. Hush: one snowshoe, then another. There is no other sound.

Isn't that a kind of prayer? The care and maintenance of the web of our noticing, the paying heed?

If you believe that someone you know is behaving in a way that may be harmful to himself or others, you have an obligation to pray for him.

which is to say the petal of FAITH, and pray, To Our Father Who is Benevolent and Reigns in Heaven, Your names are hallowed and sacred. Contemplate here your faith in the Lord your God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, while giving gratitude for the presence of both in your life and on earth. Embrace the second petal, which is to say the petal of SURRENDER, and pray, Your kingdom comes to us through obedience to your will. Thy will be done. Listen to the voice of your Father that you

do the same. It is through living this prayer that men and women will create heaven on earth. It is through this prayer that they will live as love expressed. Love Conquers All. For those with ears to hear, let them hear it. THE PRAYER OF THE SIX-PETALED ROSE, FROM THE BOOK OF LOVE, AS PRESERVED IN THE LIBRO ROSSO

rose, which is to say the petal of FAITH, and pray, To Our Father Who is Benevolent and Reigns in Heaven, Your names are hallowed and sacred. Contemplate here your faith in the Lord your God and the grace of the Holy Spirit, while giving gratitude for the presence of both in your life and on earth. Embrace the second petal, which is to say the petal of SURRENDER, and pray, Your kingdom comes to us through obedience to your will. Thy will be done. Listen to the voice of your Father that you may