It seems to me that nothing is ever achieved without a certain daily doggedness that comes from a conviction about what you are working for and toward. Nowhere is this more evident than in prayer, for the daily fruit of prayer is at best a vague sense of peace, but more often that not, it is merely a sense of having tried. However, from time to time there is the breakthrough of God that is worth the daily drudgery and is only possible because of the daily perseverance that preceded it. Not that you merit a breakthrough because you persevered, but a certain attitude of receptiveness and patience, of humility and longing grows imperceptibly but surely in the heart of anyone who prays regularly in season and out. And the cumulative experience of your prayer reinforces the conviction that prayer, after all, is communion with the God you cannot see, so that in the end you are secure in having “known” God.
—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//