If your spirit still looks around at the time of prayer, then it does not yet pray as a monk. You are no better than a man of affairs engaged in a kind of landscape gardening.

The further the soul advances, the greater are the adversaries against which it must contend.

... we should not worry about clothes or food? Such anxiety is a mark of? unbelievers, who reject the providence of the Lord and deny the Creator. An attitude of this kind is entirely wrong for Christians who believe that even? sparrows? are under the care of the holy angels (cf. Mt. 10:29). The demons, however? suggest worries of this kind? The divine word can bear no fruit, being choked out by our cares. Let us, then, renounce these cares, and throw them down before the Lord, being content with what we have at the moment?

A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.

If you patiently accept what comes, you will always pray with joy.

Do not be troubled if you do not immediately receive from God what you ask Him; for He desires to do something even greater for you, while you cling to Him in prayer.

Prayer is the laying aside of thoughts.