Even if you pour out streams of tears in your prayer, you should never become conceited, as though you were superior to others. After all, your prayer has simply received additional support so that through tears you can more freely confess your sins and find reconciliation with God. Therefore, do not turn into a compulsion what should be a fortress against compulsion. Otherwise you’ll anger further the One who has bestowed on you this gift.

Use tears to correct every request, as the Lord takes great delight in receiving a prayer born of tears.

Persist first in prayer to receive tears, so that through this grief you can tame the wildness that resides in your soul and so that by “testifying against yourself of your lawlessness to the Lord” you obtain from him release.