Fighting against the temptations of the world and the devil, and especially our own weaknesses, to hold fast to prayer, is what we are all called to do. Once we have overcome the enemy in battle through prayer, we will merit the glory that God has in store for us in heaven.
While vocal prayer is important as it involves our whole being participating in praying to God, meditation makes a more interior journey, relying on imagination, emotion and desire to be one with Him. Contemplation is a complete surrender to God under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We can communicate with God anywhere we are, although there are appropriate places for some forms of worship. While the Church gives us some instruction on when to pray, our prayer lives must continue ceaselessly, guided by the desire to unite with God and be obedient to His Word.
As followers of Christ, we must bless the Lord, adore Him, offer thanksgiving and praise, as much as we petition Him, if not more. We must also intercede for others, especially those who have wronged us.
Jesus’ life in the Gospels guides us how to pray always with a true conversion of heart, in faith, obedience and awareness. Christ exhorts us to pray without ceasing, with humility, and to always ask the Father in His name.
Using the Psalms, we would be praying as Jesus would have, we would be praying with the entire Church. There are no better prayers that encompass the entire human experience, enabling us to pray with the thoughts of God.
Not just Catholics, but men of every religion have the innate predisposition to the recognition and awareness of a God and the inspired desire to have a relationship of prayer with Him.
When we adopt the mind of God and follow Him in his ways with all our heart, pour out to Him every need, every problem and allow Him to encompass us with his love – this is prayer.
There are different ways of praying: verbal prayers, short and lengthy prayers, reading the Bible, praying the Psalms and so on. Even work and suffering can become prayer and bring us to a close relationship with God and fellow man.
We must pray always and continuously if we are to see any perceptible change in the world and in ourselves. It is not that God does not hear us when we pray sometimes. It is just His way of encouraging us to begin the change within ourselves first.