Prayer is a new creation - St Sophrony says somewhere. By that, he means that prayer will change the one who prays into a new person, a true person, the saints whom God created us to be. If we are afraid of change, we should be terrified of prayer, because prayer is deeply transformative or nothing at all.

Prayer kills the evil seeds in us and it feeds the good seeds in us. Like a series of small deaths and resurrections, prayer slowly reshapes our being, until it re-creates us according to the Image of God in us.