Intelligible Prayers

16. If I do not understand what the words mean, I will be a foreigner to the one with whom I am speaking and he will be a foreigner to me. If I pray in a language that I do not understand, my spirit prays but my mind does not benefit. If you praise God only with your spirit, how would anyone  among  those who understand only their own  language respond ‘Amen’ at the end of your thanksgiving if they do not understand what you say? It is not that your thanksgiving  is not good, but that the others are not edified by it.  (I Cor. 14:11,14,16-17)

17. A prayer is only as good as the thought connected with it, and it is impossible to connect a thought with what is not understood, because whatever is not understood cannot touch the soul. For most people, prayers spoken in an incomprehensible language are only a group of words that say nothing to the spirit. In order for prayer to touch, each word must reveal an idea, and if one does not understand it, it cannot reveal anything. One repeats it as a simple formula that has more or less virtue according to the number of times it is repeated. Many pray as an obligation; others to conform to the habit. This is why they believe they are exonerated after they have said a prayer a determined number of times and in such and such an order. God reads the depths of the heart and sees the thought and sincerity, and it is to demean God to believe that God is more impressed by the form than the depth.