Why Pray?

From early in his pontificate, the pope's reflection on why prayer is necessary to Christian life.

BY: Pope John Paul II

Reprinted from The Private Prayers of Pope John Paul II with permission of Simon and Schuster.

We must always "pray and not lose heart."

Why must we pray?

We must pray first of all because we are believers.

Prayer is in fact the recognition of our limits and our dependence: we come from God, we are of God, and to God we return! We can therefore only abandon ourselves to him, our Lord and Creator, with absolute, total trust.

Prayer is first of all an act of intelligence, a feeling of humility and gratefulness, an attitude of trust and abandonment to the one who gave us his life for love.

Prayer is a mysterious but real dialogue with God, a dialogue of confidence and love.

We are, however, Christians, and so we must pray as Christians.

In fact, for the Christian prayer acquires a special character, which changes its intimate nature and its intimate value.

The Christian is a disciple of Jesus; he believes truly that Jesus is the Word Incarnate; the Son of God come among us on this earth.

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