Finding

Picture source.

I have come to believe that most people in the world are slowly asphyxiating. People are not getting any "air" because their souls are not "breathing." To pray is to breathe. And people are not praying, so they are spiritually dying...or they may never have actually lived. Unfortunately, they do not know it and thus their situation is all the more dangerous.

To pray is to breathe. No more than the body can do without oxygen can the soul do without prayer, that is, without breathing God's life. . . . It is not that we pray simply because we have a few extra moments or we believe that it would be a good idea to pray. No. We pray because we must. . . . [W]e pray always by opening our hearts to the ever-present God.

--Fr. Stephen Rossetti, When the Lion Roars (70-71)