The dominant theme of the quotes posted this week to social media (Facebook, Instagram, X) this past week is the simplicity, confidence, and consistency we are called to in Christian prayer.

To pray is, at the least, to look towards God; to pray is to think of God, to speak to God, or to entreat God—whether it be with spoken words or with ideas or mental images or, more simply, with the infinitely deeper but obscure regard of contemplation. When there is none of this, one cannot say that prayer exists, in the proper sense of the word. — René Voillaume

The more closely a soul is held captive by love, the more she is identified with all humanity, for love causes her to enter into all suffering wherever souls are to be saved. Feelings of fervour, and love, are two different things. When you feel joy in loving, supposing that you are capable of expressing your love, certainly you would do it as much as is possible. This is what one calls the fervour of love. On the other hand, if, in loving, you only feel distaste and sadness, without feeling anything of the fervour of your love but that, nevertheless, you keep in your heart the desire to love, come what may, even were it necessary to die of it, that is to love with all your heart, with all your strength. — Marcel Văn

If you become accustomed to having Him at your side and if He sees that you love to have Him there and are always trying to please Him, you will never be able to, so to speak, send Him away. — Saint Teresa of Avila

I go to You simply, with all confidence, like one would go to an intimate Friend. It seems to me that You love this gentle familiarity, and so with abandon and confidence I await the moment that will unite me to You forever. — Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity

I am convinced that the Church is wider than is supposed, that she possesses everywhere children who do not know her and whom she does not know by name. Hence too my deep conviction—not indeed that the gate is not broad or the road wide that leads on to perdition (see Mt 7:13), but purely on account of the prayer of Jesus—of the greater number of the elect. — Charles Journet