For your part then apply all your zeal to the reading of Scripture, with faith and the goodwill that are pleasing to God. It is not enough for you to knock and seek. What is needed above all in order to obtain the understanding of divine matters is prayer.
ORIGEN Letter to Gregory Thaumaturgus, 3
If you wish to attain to true knowledge of the Scriptures, hasten to acquire first an unshakable humility of heart. That alone will lead you, not to the knowledge that puffs up, but to that which enlightens, by the perfecting of love.
JOHN CASSIAN Conferences, XIV, 10
Never approach the words of the mysteries that are in the Scriptures without praying and asking for God's help. Say, ‘Lord, grant me to feel the power that is in them’. Reckon prayer to be the key that opens the true meaning of the Scriptures.
ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 73
