Do Not Count the End of Prayer as the End of Prayer

There weighs on your mind the feeling that not everything was done as it should have been in prayer… This happens from awareness that it was performed not as it should be: thoughts ran away, inappropriate feelings arose, and concerns about something intervened. In this you must immediately repent, condemn yourself, and form the intention to be careful.

You must try to acquire the habit of not counting the end of prayer as the end of prayer, but even after this to consider it your duty to remain in prayer. This is fulfilled by constant remembrance of God, with reverence and surrender of yourself to God’s will. Then you will have the sense that, leaving prayer, you are not leaving prayer—but only changing one form of it to another.

(Letter 198. Vol. 1, p. 248)