Therefore, as I have said, one must not call this gift and grace spiritual prayer

At that moment the understanding is yonder, above prayer | and at the discovery of something better, prayer is abandoned. | Then the understanding does not pray with prayer | but it gazes in ecstasy at incomprehensible things that lie beyond this mortal world | and it is silenced by its ignorance of all that is found there. | This is the unknowing that has been called higher than knowledge. | This is the unknowing concerning which it has been said. | ‘Blessed is the man who has attained the unknowing that is inseparable from prayer,’ | of which may we be deemed worthy by the grace of the only-begotten Son of God. | Homily 23, pp. 245