The Fruit of Mental Prayer

Why do we pray? 
Is it for love, longing and divine eros for God, or for the hope of compensation and the wages which the Lord sends with the consolation and sweetness of Grace ?

Prayer is a basic necessity of our being as indispensable as breathing. It forms the natural environment of each soul, in which the love for God is the beginning and end.

But by no means can we not expect the fruits also, the taste of which makes man more easily attain his divine destination, in other words, his union with Christ, who is the beginning and the source of all good.


Themes from the Philokalia- Watchfulness and Prayer pg. 66
Archimandrite Ioannikos