“The prayer that a person offers with all their strength has great power. It sweetens a bitter heart, cheers a sad heart, enriches a poor heart, makes a foolish heart wise, makes a timid heart brave, strengthens a weak heart, opens the eyes of a blind heart, and warms a cold soul. It draws the great God to a small heart and lifts the hungry soul to the God of fullness” (St. Matilda of Hackeborn).
The life of prayer is essential to our spiritual journey. If we abandon it, we will eventually suffer spiritual death. If we do not know it, it means that our soul has not yet awakened and lacks a deeper life. It is not in vain that the Apostle Paul exhorts us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and thus to lift ourselves constantly toward God, who has infused the spirit of prayer into our hearts so that we may respond to Him.
St. Matilda describes the great power of prayer when a person offers it with all their strength. This means that the heart must be present and that prayer should not be recited mechanically or unconsciously, much less used as a kind of magical practice. All the fruits that prayer produces, described by St. Matilda in today’s passage, are the graces that God has prepared for the person who prays sincerely and are a manifestation of the love of the heavenly Father in the human heart. Therefore, our prayer is a constant invitation to God to make His love effective in our hearts.
Thus, prayer offered with an open heart becomes the spiritual place of encounter between the Creator and His creature, in which He delights and in which our hungry soul is drawn to the One who is its true nourishment.