The Joy of Prayer

23. Come, you who wish to believe: the heavenly spirits make haste to proclaim great things to you. God, my children, opens his treasures to distribute their benefits to you. O disbelievers! If you only knew how good for the heart faith is and how it leads the soul to repentance and prayer! Prayer! Ah! How touching are the words that leave the lips at the time one prays! Prayer is a divine mist that destroys the highest heat of the passions; the firstborn daughter of faith, it leads us to the pathway that takes us to God. In introspection and solitude you are with God; no more mysteries for you, because he unveils himself to you. O Apostles of thought, life is before you. Your soul detaches itself from matter and launches itself onto those infinite and ethereal worlds that poor human beings fail to acknowledge.

Press onward! Press onward along the pathways of prayer and you will hear the voices of angels. What harmony! No longer the confused noises and shrill sounds of the earth, but the lyres of archangels and the sweet, soft voices of the seraphim, lighter than the morning breezes when they play among the leaves of your great forests. Amongst what delights you shall walk! Your language cannot describe such bliss; it enters through all your pores, so alive and refreshing is the spring from which you drink through prayer! Sweet voices and heady fragrances that the soul hears and breathes when it launches itself onto those unknown and inhabited realms through  prayer! Without  the  confusion of carnal desires, all aspirations are divine. And you, too, pray as Christ did carrying his cross to Golgotha, to Calvary. Carry your cross and you will feel the sweet emotions that passed through his soul even as he was carrying the infamous cross. He was going to die, but in order to live the heavenly life in the dwelling of his Father.

St. Augustine (Paris, 1861)