Once I asked a 16 y.o boy:
”Do you love God, my son?”
”I love Him very much”, he answered spontaneously.
”Do you pray to Him regularly?”
”No”, he answered candidly.
This young man could not understand the antithesis between his two answers. For it’s quite impossible for someone to love God and not pray to Him.
If you have a friend you care so much about, don’t you try to communicate with him oftenly on various topics?
Watch these numbers I tell you, my son. They are very precise. A man who died at the age of 70 divided the years of his life as follows: he had worked for 15 years, had labored for 20 years, had eaten for 2 years, he had dressed for 1 year, had washed himself for 9 months, he had shaved for 7 months, had cleaned his nose for 4 months, had brushed his teeth for 2 months and so on.
Did you notice anything? All the above mentioned things refer exclusively to exterior activities. To body cares.
But when you stand before God, the account you have to do will be quite different. Then the Righteous Judge asks you:
”How many good deeds have you done? How many misdoings?”
”How many duties have you fulfilled and how many you haven’t?”
”How long have you prayed?”
In a year your heart beat for 36.792.900 times. From this huge number how many heart beats have you offered to God?
”But how long should I pray?”
You have to know, my son, that God does not count prayer by the clock, but by the ardour, by the good disposition of your heart. A small lively, fervent prayer values more than a flabby, typiconal, barren one , even if that takes long hours.
What draws God’s attention is the zeal and the fervent disposition of the heart. Make your morning and evening prayers. But don’t forget to elevate your heart and spirit to God many a time.
Blessed will be that day, my son, when you would dedicate your very first thoughts to God. And your sleep will be peaceful and serene when before falling in its arms, you would turn again all your thoughts towards Him.
