Elder, when I have hatred, can my heart work in prayer?
How can your heart work in prayer, when you have passions inside you?
Take a rusty cable and connect it to the phone.
Can you communicate? It short-circuits, buzzes. And man, when he has rust, passions in him, he has short circuits in the spiritual life, he short-circuits himself.
He must pay attention to the pride, the selfishness, the will. Because, if he is possessed by them, the Grace of God cannot visit him when he tries to pray. He must clean his rusty “cables” in order to become a good conductor and to be able to communicate with God.
And as much as possible he will be cleansed of passions, as much as possible he will proceed to prayer.
The Passions are parasites that hinder divine communication. If the parasites do not go away, how will man be able to communicate with God?