And if you pray, your love for God will increase

[Mary Naeem]

Pope Shenouda III





If you love God, you will pray. And if you pray, your love for God will increase. So prayer is a statement of love that we express in words.
We see this love and this sentiment clearly in the Psalms of David when he says: “O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You” (Ps 63:1), and “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Ps 42:1-2). It is longing for God, thirsting for Him as a dry land thirsts for water...
Many pray and do not feel comfort because their prayer is void of love... It is just words!
God has rejected the prayers of those people and said about them, “...these people honour Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me” (Is 29:13). And the Lord Jesus Christ repeated the same rebuke, concerning the
Jews, in the Gospels of St Matthew (15:8) and St Mark (7:6).
So then mix your prayer with love. Talk in your prayer to God with sentiment. Prayer is the longing of the soul and being in the presence of God. It is the longing of the limited to the Unlimited, the longing of the created to his Creator and the longing of the soul to its source and to its satisfaction...