God told Catherine of Siena "Whenever you think of me, I think of you". When you pray, your first thought is God, and just before you finish praying your last thought is God. When you grow to pray better, then every thought in between is God too. When you pray like God wills you to pray, you will not enter prayer nor exit it, rather your entire being will remain in prayer through every thought, feeling, and action. Your being becomes an everlasting flow of giving glory to God. Until then you must go on reentering and reexiting the experience of prayer.
When you pray and think of God, you appear before God and heaven, in a similar way that an angel from heaven appears before mankind. The instant you direct your being toward God, he simply exists all within you, and around you. Catherine describes it like the fish in the ocean and the ocean in the fish. Job complains until he enters into communion with God, and then nothing matters anymore. Thomas Aquinas' value for his multitude of writings on faith and intellect faded before him like a straw consumed by fire when he entered into a mystical communion with God.
When you pray with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, you become a new being, no more the same. "How"? You ask. "I am the same and my problems are here present before me." Yet knowing that you age, you do not question it, for although the process is hard to track, it nevertheless continues. It is the same in prayer. When you pray, you enter into communion with God and the experience becomes greater than the subject on your mind. It is God who prays within you and it is God who offers your prayers, and it is God who receives them. You become one with God, without loosing who you are. You become a beloved child in God's Triune Being, loved like an unborn in her mother's womb, one with her, yet not her. Then God gives birth to you and you are new again, but your blood is nourished with his blood and your soul is vibrant with his light.
Pray and make time stands still. When you pray know that God thinks of you.
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