Mother of a thousand blessings

Artist: Marianne Stokes

Image from Wikimedia Commons

I love the way John Chrysostom uses one metaphor after another here. It's as if he's struggling for a way to articulate the loveliness and wonder of prayer and nothing will quite do and so he tries again and again:

Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine which is never exhausted, a sky unobscured by clouds, a heaven unruffled by the storm. It is the root, the fountain, the mother of a thousand blessings.

- Saint John Chrysostom

The word, "Chrysostom", by the way, means "golden-mouthed". You can see why he was called that!