To Pray is to Become

"Often I have said to people, 'I will pray for you,' but how often did I really enter into the full reality of what that means? When I really bring my friends and the many I pray for into my innermost being and feel their pains, their struggles, their cries in my own soul, then I leave myself, so to speak, and become them, then I have compassion." (Henri Nouwen)