CONTRA FATUM

"If Celsus wishes us to be generals for our country, let him realize that we do this; but we do not do so with a view to being seen by men and to being proud about it. Our prayers are made in secret in the mind itself, and are sent up as from priests on behalf of the people in our country. Christians do more good to their countries than the rest of mankind, since they educate the citizens and teach them to be devoted to God, the guardian of their city; and they take those who have lived good lives in the most insignificant cities up to a divine and heavenly city." (Con. Cel. VIII,74)

"[...]the Lord of every language hears those who pray in every language as though He were hearing one utterance, so to speak, the same meaning being expressed by the various languages. For the supreme God is not one of those that have been allotted a particular language, barbarian or Greek, who no longer understand the rest or are no longer willing to pay heed to those who speak in other languages." (Con. Cel. VIII,37)

Yet one of those blog-posts that are "to be updated" as  I find more quotes on the subject matter. There is a tendency to think of prayer as a mechanism of obtaining things. You ask, you receive. God is imagined to be some sort of cosmic mechanical dispenser. You put in prayer, you get something, whatever, out. Of course it has to be honest prayer from a pure heart, and so on. We also tend to think of prayer as an initiative we take in order to get God's attention. But what we forget is that the only prayer acceptable to God is the one animated by the Spirit.

"if the presence of a good man, through the respect and reverence which he inspires, always improves him with whom he associates, with much more reason does not he who always holds uninterrupted converse with God by knowledge, life, and thanksgiving, grow at every step superior to himself in all respects—in conduct, in words, in disposition? Such an one is persuaded that God is ever beside him, and does not suppose that He is confined in certain limited places; so that under the idea that at times he is without Him, he may indulge in excesses night and day. Holding festival, then, in our whole life, persuaded that God is altogether on every side present, we cultivate our fields, praising; we sail the sea, hymning; in all the rest of our conversation we conduct ourselves according to rule. The Gnostic, then, is very closely allied to God, being at once grave and cheerful in all things,—grave on account of the bent of his soul towards the Divinity, and cheerful on account of his con...