When we have prayed prayers long enough, all the words drop
away and we begin to live in the presence of God. Then prayer is finally real.
When we find ourselves sinking into the world around us with a sense of
purpose, an inner light and deep and total trust that whatever happens is right
for us, then we have become prayer.
When we kneel down, we admit the magnitude of God in the
universe and our own smallness in the face of it. When we stand with hands
raised, we recognize the presence of God in life and our own inner glory
because of it. All life is in the hands of God. Even the desire to pray is the
grace to pray. The movement to pray is the movement of God in our souls.
Our ability to pray depends on the power and place of God in
our life. We pray because God attracts us and we pray only because God is
attracting us. We are not, in other words, even the author of our own prayer
life. It is the goodness of God, not any virtue that we have developed on our
own, that brings us to the heart of God. And it is with God's help that we seek
to go there.
Source: Joan Chittister OSB: The Monastic
Way, In My Own Words
