Anyone who has the habit of speaking before God’s majesty as if he were speaking to a slave, careless about how he is speaking, and saying whatever comes into his head and whatever he’s learned from saying prayers at other times, in my opinion is not praying. Please, God, may no Christian pray in this way.
–Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
Even the straws under my knees shout to distract me from prayer.
–Saint Augustine (354-430)
It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction.
–Saint Edmund (c. 841-868)
Come to prayer, and bring your whole self with you. Do not let your mind remain in the market with your business. … Bring it back, so that it may come in and ask for its life. Do not stand half in and half out, or your prayer may get lost between the two parts. Stand at prayer united and complete, a true human, and then you can receive whatever you ask from God.
–Jacob of Serugh (c. 451-521)
If, at the time when the mind is praying it is distracted by any extraneous thought or worry about anything, then this prayer is not called pure.
–Saint Isaac of Syria (Seventh Century)
