"The fullness of prayer is the gift of tears."
- St. Isaac the Syrian
However, psalmody is not the end, it is the means. Psalmody is a training ground, a place where we can learn to concentrate our attention by paying attention to our thoughts in prayer. More specifically, in psalmody we attend to thoughts and learn to control them, forcing ourselves to attend to what is true, pure, good and beautiful emerging from our hearts as we reflect on the words of the prayers and psalms. In psalmody we also learn to attend to compunction, to feel the pain (literally, the puncture) of our heart. This pain is the mother of the pure prayer that emerges from undistracted thoughts--what St. Isaac calls "unwandering concentrated prayer." When this feeling overcomes us we can no longer say prayers because this unwandering concentrated prayer is the prayer that overtakes prayers.
St. Isaac says, "When prayer gives you her hand she will take the place of your office."
Compunction is the pain of heart, or the broken and contrite heart, that God does not despise. Sometime, however, we wonder: is the pain of heart that I am experiencing godly compunction? Are the tears the "gift of tears" that the holy Fathers and Mothers talk about? Certainly there is such a thing as selfish tears, tears of self pity and anger. There are also tears of laughter and sentimentality. In my experience, it is usually easy to identify selfish tears. What I cannot identify in my own experience are tears that are godly, that are a gift given by God and offered to God as prayer.
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