And the best usury that any man
or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end
of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best put their
Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as
they are in this world, ever finding out and ever following after better
and better methods of prayer, and ever forming more secret, more
steadfast, and more spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they
literally pray without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into
new enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrichments. It
was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her singular originality
in prayer and her complete captivity to prayer. It was the time she
spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace, and the sanctification,
and the power for carrying on hard and unrequited work that she all her
life found in prayer. It was her fidelity and her utter surrender of
herself to this first and last of all her religious duties, till it
became more a delight, and, indeed, more an indulgence, than a duty.
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