Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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Prayer
 


Prayer as a way of “accustoming” oneself to being with God brings into being men and women who are not motivated by selfishness, by the desire to possess or by the thirst for power, but by gratuitousness, by the desire to love, by the thirst to serve, in other words who are motivated by God; and only in this way is it possible to bring light to the darkness of the world.

 
General Audience
Paul VI Hall, Vatican City
20 June 2012

 
 
 
Prayer
 


'Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me, according to your word.'' This is how Mary teaches us to pray: not by seeking to affirm our own will and our own desires before God, but by letting him decide what he wants to do. From Mary we learn graciousness and readiness to help, but we also learn humility and generosity in accepting God's will.

 
Homily
Alotting, Germany
11 September 2006

 
 
 
Prayer
 


Mary teaches us how necessary it is to find in our busy day, moments for silent recollection, to meditate on what the Lord wants to teach us, on how he is present and active in the world and in our life; to be able to stop for a moment and meditate.

 
General Audience
Castel Gandolfo
17 August 2011

 
 
 
Prayer
 


Let us not fear to create silence, within and outside ourselves, if we wish to be able not only to become aware of God's voice, but also to make out the voice of the person beside us, the voices of others.

 
Homily
Sulmona, Italy
4 July 2010

 
 
 
Prayer
 


St Augustine compares meditation on the mysteries of God to the assimilation of food and uses a verb that recurs throughout the Christian tradition, “to ruminate”; that is, the mysteries of God should continually resonate within us so that they become familiar to us, guide our lives and nourish us, as does the food we need to sustain us.

 
General Audience
Castel Gandolfo
17 August 2011

 
 
 
Prayer
 


It is necessary to learn how to pray, as it were acquiring this art ever anew; even those who are very advanced in spiritual life always feel the need to learn from Jesus, to learn how to pray authentically.

 
General Audience
St. Peter's Square
4 May 2011

 
 
 
Prayer
 


Without prayer there is no experience of God.

 
General Audience
St Peter's Square

9 April 2008

 
 
 
Prayer
 


“We do not know how to pray as we ought”. We want to pray, but God is far, we do not have the words, the language, to speak with God, not even the thought. We can only open ourselves, set our time at the disposal of God, waiting for him to help us enter into true dialogue. This very lack of words, this absence of words, even the desire to enter into contact with God is a prayer that the Holy Spirit not only understands, but carries, interprets, to God. It is precisely our weakness which becomes, through the Holy Spirit, true prayer, true contact with God.

 
General Audience
St Peter's Square

16 May 2012

 

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