Father Rafail Noica: “Prayer must be made in the most direct language possible.

Father Rafail Noica: “Prayer must be made in the most direct language possible. I am thinking of Father Sophrony, who told us about a person who asked him: ‘How should I pray to God?’ At that time, Father Sophrony did not know that this person—an Anglican woman—had already sought an appropriate answer from many priests and spiritual fathers in England and elsewhere, but they had all given her general answers of the kind: ‘Page 35, paragraph 4!’ Yet in her soul she was thinking: ‘If this archimandrite tells me the same thing, I will renounce all these ideas—God and prayer—forever.’ Father Sophrony’s very first words to her were: ‘With God, there is no need to be polite; simply pour out your heart before Him.’ I do not know the rest of the conversation, but that person discovered such a powerful prayer that, in the evenings, she would place her head on the ground and weep for hours from the intensity of the prayer. Perhaps you have already guessed that this person did not remain Anglican. She converted to Orthodoxy many years ago.”

from the Romanian book „The Other Noica”