You have put me in great embarrassment by asking me about my prayer. Alas! Usually, it is full of inattentiveness and suffering. For what can a poor, infirm spirit occupied with a thousand different things do? And I tell you candidly and without embellishment that about twenty years ago, God took away from me any ability to achieve anything in personal prayer through thinking and contemplating or meditating. All I can do is suffer and simply linger with my spirit in God and, through my complete surrender, cling to His action, without participating in it in any way, except for the agitation it stirs within me as I wait for how His goodness will choose to bless me.
(Jane Frances de Chantal /1572–1641/, correspondence)
