Early last fall I was speaking with my spiritual director about my experience of the prayer for the last long while.  I told him that I felt that all I did was fight distraction after distraction.  He replied by describing Cardinal John Henry Newman’s response when asked how long he had prayed: “About a minute . . . and it took me an hour to get there.”   Don’t you love it?

And from Dom Columba Marmion: “It is above all on days of weariness, sickness, impatience, temptation, spiritual dryness, and trials, curing hours of sometimes terrible anguish which press upon the soul, that holy abandonment is most pleasing to God.”