That is how it is for us. Faithfulness to prayer involves a painful confrontation with what we have in our hearts. There we find things that weigh us down, tangled things, dirty things. But the day comes when, deeper down than our psychological wounds, even deeper than our sins and dirt, we reach a pure spring, the presence of God in the depths of our hearts, enabling our whole selves to be purified and renewed. “He who believes in me, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water (John 7:38). Human beings are not purified from the outside inwards, but starting from within. Not so much by a moral effort we make, but by discovering a Presence within us and letting him act freely.

By faithfulness to prayer, we find within us a space of purity, peace, and freedom, God’s presence, closer to us than we are to ourselves. The center of the soul is God, says St. John of the Cross. We learn little by little to center our lives on him, and no longer on our wounded psychological periphery-our fears, bitterness, aggressiveness, jealousies, etc.

This kind of interiorization, which is one of the fruits of prayer, is much more than simply recollecting ourselves. It is discovering and uniting ourselves to an inner Presence that becomes our life and the source of all our thoughts and actions.  –Father Jacques Philippe ‘Thirsting For Prayer’