“Your prayer should not only come from your lips. Be one and all attention, enter into the hidden space of your heart, enter it completely.” (Ambrose of Milan)
Prayer takes our head to our heart, from the surface into the depth … to abide in silence before God.
But this is not always given like a present. Often you only arrive to this silence after a storm of thoughts and emotions: pain, sadness, powerlessness, anger, fury, passion and temper can carry on within you. This can be a tough kind of confrontation.
However, the one who perseveres in prayer and who surrenders his thinking and emotions to God, will not have to remain in darkness for ever.
In places where you may not expect it anymore, you discover at a particular time ‘His presence’, source of all that gives life: peace, fulfilment, joy, love, acceptance of yourself and the other, community, creative vigor …
For monks, personal prayer indicates attention to and in every moment.