To pray means to acknowledge and recall the laws of the eternal and infinite being of God and to measure your past and future deeds against them. It is good to do this as often as possible.
Before starting to pray, try yourself, see if you can focus your thoughts, and if not, then do not pray.
The one who turns prayer into a habit makes it insincere.
— The Talmud
Why deprive yourself of prayer, a resource against our weakness? All spiritual aspirations that bring us closer to God free us from thinking about ourselves. By asking God for help, we learn to find this help within ourselves. He does not change us, we change ourselves by drawing nearer to him. All that we ask from him as our due, we give us ourselves.
— Rousseau
When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Most certainly, I tell you, they have received their reward.
But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
In praying, do not use vain repetitions as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking.
Therefore do not be like them, for your Father knows what things you need before you ask him.
— Matthew 6:5–8
It has been recognized since ancient times that a human being needs prayer.
For the people of the past, prayer was—and still is today for the majority of people—an appeal made under specific circumstances in specific places using specific actions and words to God or gods for their propitiation.
Christian teaching knows of no such prayers, it teaches that prayer is necessary not as a means of ridding oneself of worldly misfortunes or acquiring worldly goods, but as a means of fortifying a human being in his battle with sin.
Prayer consists in disconnecting from everything worldly, everything that can distract my feelings (the Mohammedans do this wonderfully by closing their eyes and ears with their hands when they enter a mosque or begin praying) in order to evoke the divine source within myself. The best thing for this is what Christ teaches: go into your room alone and shut your door, i.e. pray in complete solitude, whether in your room, in a forest or in a field. After disconnecting from everything worldly, everything external, to pray is to evoke within yourself the divine part of your nature, to transport yourself into it, to communicate through it with that of which it is a particle, to realize yourself to be a slave of God and to evaluate your soul, your deeds and your wishes not against the demands of the external conditions of the world, but by the demands of this divine part of your soul.
And this type of prayer is not idle emotion and excitement that is produced by the public prayers with their songs, paintings, illuminations and sermons, no, this is a prayer that supports, fortifies and elevates the soul. Such prayer is a confession, a reflection on your past deeds and an indication of the direction for your future ones.
It is good to renew your prayer, i.e. the expression of your relationship to God. A human being is constantly growing and changing, and therefore his relationship to God must also change and become clearer. And so his prayer must change as well.
