If God is slow in answering your request, and you ask but do not promptly receive anything, do not be upset, for you are not wiser than God. When you remain as you were before, without anything happening, it is either because your behaviour is not worthy of your request, or because the paths in which your heart was travelling were far removed from the aim of your prayer, or because your interior condition is far too childish, when compared with the magnitude of the thing for which you have asked. St. Isaac of Nineveh [Syria], The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life.
Prayer, according to its quality, is communion and union of man with God, by its action it upholds the world. It is reconciliation with God. It is the mother, but also the daughter, of tears. It is the atonement of sins, a bridge over temptations, a wall against affliction, a crushing of conflicts, a work of Angels, the food of the Incoporeal, future gladness, boundless work, source of virtues, cause of grace, invisible progress, food of the soul, illumination of the mind, an axe against despair, a proof of hope, a cure for sorrow, the wealth of monks, the treasure of hesychasts, the reduction of anger, the mirror of progress, the demonstration of stature, an indication of one's condition, a relevation of future things, a sign of glory. For one who truly prayers, prayer is the court, the judgment hall and the tribunal of the Lord before the judgement to come.
St. John of the Ladder
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