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Happiness that prayer provides. 23. Come, you who desire to believe. The celestial Spirits come to announce great things to you. God, my children, opens his treasures to grant you all the benefits. Unbelieving men! If you only knew how great good faith does to the heart and how it moves the soul to repentance and prayer! The prayer! Oh! How touching are the words that come out of the mouth of the one who prays! Prayer is the divine dew that calms the excessive heat of passions. Firstborn daughter of faith, she directs us to the path that leads to God. In withdrawal and solitude, you are with God. For you, there are no more mysteries; they reveal themselves to you. Apostles of thought, it is life for you. Your soul detaches itself from matter and rolls through these infinite and ethereal worlds, which poor humans are unaware of. Advance, advance along the paths of prayer and you will hear the voices of the angels. What harmony! They are no longer the confused noise and shrill sounds of Earth; they are the lyres of the archangels; They are the soft and gentle voices of the seraphim, more delicate than the morning breezes, when they play in the foliage of their forests. Among what delights you will not walk! Your language will not be able to express this happiness, so quickly does it enter your every pore, so alive and refreshing is the spring from which, praying, you drink. Sweet voices, intoxicating perfumes, that the soul hears and aspires to, when it launches itself into these unknown spheres inhabited by prayer! Without a mixture of carnal desires, all aspirations are divine. You too, pray like Christ, taking his cross to Golgotha, to Calvary. Carry your cross and you will feel the sweet emotions that permeated his soul, even though he was weighed down by an infamous tree. He would die, but to live the heavenly life in his Father's abode. Saint Augustine. Paris, 1861