What Abbot Antony Said About Prayer

So that you may see what true prayer is like, I will give you not my own opinion but that of the blessed Antony. We have known him at times to be so persistent in prayer that often, as he prayed in a rapture of mind and the sunrise began to appear, we heard him cry out in the fervor of his spirit: “Why do you hinder me, O sun? You are rising for this very purpose, to draw me away from the brightness of this true light.” His too is this heavenly and more than human saying about the goal of prayer: “That is not a perfect prayer,” he said, “in which a monk understands himself and the words he is praying.” And if we too, as far as our slender ability allows, may venture to add anything to this splendid saying, we will set out the signs of a prayer that is heard by the Lord, as far as we have tested them. [a]