*A person who asks if it's necessary to pray today makes it clear that she's still speaking from within the framework of ideology.  We don't have to: prayer rises up from the heart of life.

But prayer can also become a terrible weight and be abandoned; then one day it begins to invade one's existence. We don't decide-it happens or doesn't happen. "Prayer is nor perfect," Cassien says, "if the one who prays is aware of himself and realizes that he is praying."

Prayer is often auto-suggestion, set in motion by words.  We need to make use of words against words, to unmask complacency and dishonesty, and to realize that we often try to use God as a tool.  Praying is a struggle.  It's a matter of going beyond faith in one's own thoughts in order to rediscover the original faith. Business executives are imprisoned in their steel or glass towers, but those dedicated to the interior life and religious ideas can just as easily be walled up inside their cloisters.  Let's not have too much reverence for the interior life; it's a production like any other until a breakthrough takes place, which is prayed for and expressed in action.  We can then speak of a certain greatness of soul whereby a person becomes a partner in God's creation.
-Jean Sulivan