“One of the elders said: pray attentively and you will soon straighten out your thoughts.” (Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, p. 78)
“The Lord teaches, besides other, higher matters, of which there is no time to speak now, that if we are stirred up to pray alone in our houses and bedrooms this also encourages prayer to God in church, and inner prayer of the mind encourages spoken prayer. If someone only wants to pray when he attends God’s Church, and has no concern at all for prayer at home, in the streets or in the fields, then even when he is present in church he is not really praying.” (St. Gregory Palamas, Homilies, p. 51)
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