PRAYER
A CHILD never complains of being unable to pray; complaints are seldom made by older people to whom prayer is not an ordinary thing or a well-known experience; it is only
those who have learnt something of the meaning and life of prayer that complain of the difficulty they find in it.
One might almost go further and assert the seeming paradox that the more we know about prayer, the more difficult it tends to become.
Of course, prayer is a gift of God, and His gifts are free from His hand and may not be purchased. Nevertheless of all His gifts perhaps none is more nearly purchasable than prayer; none, that is to say, which He more willingly gives in return for what we offer Him. more than any other of His gifts that of prayer depends on our desire for it, our efforts to attain it, and the dispositions we prepare for its reception.
Hence, while we must allow that God can and often does bestow the gift of prayer, and consolation in prayer, and life in prayer, of His own overflowing bounty and without consideration of previous dispositions, still it is also true that ordinarily, and ultimately for all, certain dispositions must always be preserved if the habit of, and interest in, and relish for prayer are to be maintained....
[Continued]
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918
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