It is stepping back into the arms of the Divine and melting into the embrace of the Beloved. There are so many ways to pray, but it this merging that is important. To ask God to provide something you think you do not have is the lowest level of prayer. To open the soul to the brilliance of eternity, drinking in the light of God as if it were a fountain, this is the highest. It is the wordless prayer that God cannot ignore because it unites the soul with the Divine current from which all life flows. There are also prayers that use words and concepts, and they are not less than wordless prayer. The power of our prayer is born upon the wings of our intent, and nothing else. It is there we must turn if we are to judge the worth of our song to God. When our intention is love, then prayer is the path that leads us to the throne of our true home.
Prayer is never contained by the words we speak, but by the devotion within which we enfold our words. Without this love, no matter how beautiful the prayer, it is empty and lifeless. It was this energy the Apostle Paul spoke of when we pray from our hearts, the ether of our love attaches itself to our prayer and our prayer is carried by the wings of angels to the altar of the Divine. Without love, our prayers are like lead weights which are too heavy for the angels to carry. They lie upon the ground and are forgotten, never once feeling the sharp wind of the Heavenly sky.
Excerpts from the book The Prayer of St. Francis, by James F. Twyman
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