To Pray, Prayer, Supplication

See also: Meditation, contemplation, prayer, To ask, The "Hail Mary" (Ave Maria), Our Father.

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Young woman praying in church - Jules Breton

"For me, prayer is a surge of the Heart, it is a simple glance cast toward the sky, it is a cry of gratitude and love amidst trial as well as in joy".

"When you pray, always unite yourselves, always, always, always to Me. I will pray out loud for you, covering your voice of men with my voice of Man-God. I will place your prayer on my pierced hands and raise it up to the Father. It will become a host of infinite value. My voice merged with yours will ascend like a filial Kiss to the Father, and the crimson of my wounds will make your prayer precious. Be in Me if you want to have the Father in you, with you, for you."

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

Orison, dialogue with God

• Never disregard the Protection of prayer
• Jesus, in His agonies, prayed for you to teach you how to pray.
• Mary: "Pray, my children, with the words of my Son. Say with Him to the Father, for your Enemies: 'Father forgive them.' Call the Father who has withdrawn from you, indignant at your faults: 'Father, Father, why have you forsaken me? I am a [[Sinner (male and female)|sinner], but if you forsake me, I shall perish. Come back, Holy Father, so that I may be saved.' Entrust to the Only One who can keep it safe from the blows of the devil, your Good eternity, your spirit: 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' Oh! If humbly and with an affectionate Heart you entrust your spirit to God, He will lead you as a father his little one and will not allow anything to harm him."
• Prayer, the key to a life entirely in God
• When you pray, always, always, always unite yourselves to Me. I will pray out loud for you, covering your voice of men with my voice of Man-God. I will place your prayer upon my pierced hands and raise it up to the Father. It will become a host of infinite value. My voice merged with yours will ascend like a filial Kiss to the Father and the crimson of my wounds will make your prayer precious. Be in Me if you want the Father to be in you, with you, for you."
• The "selfish" prayer: they pray and receive communion for "their" own needs
• During the night, my spirit draws its nourishment from the Father. Orison, meditation and solitude are more necessary to me than material food.
• "Prayer is a gift that God grants to man and that man gives back to God."
• To Peter, who has a worry and says to Him: "But You who know everything about us, You already know it," Jesus responds: "Yes, I already know it. Even God the Father knows man's needs, but He wants to find in man the trust that exposes his own needs and asks for help."
• I resort to the great remedy, the great weapon: prayer
• Pray in secret: Speak to your Father in secret from your Heart - Prayer is an act of love. Prayer is an act of love: One can love God as much by making bread as by praying, by caring for the sick as by meditating, by attending to family tasks as by undertaking a Pilgrimage to the Temple, by sacrificing even our rightful desires to gather in the Lord as by sacrificing a lamb.
  It is enough to imbue all your being and all your activity with love. Do not be afraid! The Father sees. The Father understands. The Father listens. The Father grants what is needed. How many Graces does He not grant for a single sigh of love, true, perfect! What abundance of Graces for an intimate sacrifice made with love!
  Do not be like the Gentiles. God does not need you to tell Him what He must do because you need it. That, the pagans can say to their idols who cannot hear. But do not act thus with God, with the God True, Spiritual, who is not only God and King but also your Father who knows before you ask Him what you need.
• Pray for Me, Son of man who goes to the encounter of all His torments of Redeemer.
• "But then what must one have to overcome these demons? - Prayer and fasting. Nothing else is needed. Pray and fast."
• Prayer as Protection Against Satan: To Peter, a little scandalized at going to Magdala (a town that must have a bad reputation): Are you afraid of becoming corrupt? No! Not even him, you see (indicating the very young John), not even he will be harmed. Not him because he does not want to. As you do not want, as your brother does not want, and John's brother... as none of you, for the moment, wants. As long as one does not want, no harm happens. But you must not want with force and constancy. Force and constancy are acquired from the Father by praying with sincerity of intention. You will not all later be able to pray thus... What do you say, Judas? Do not trust yourself too much. I, who am the Christ, constantly pray to have strength Against Satan. Are you greater than Me? Pride is the crack through which Satan enters. Judas, be watchful and humble."
• Let us pray together. There is nothing else to do to regain Peace, spiritual strength, love, compassion... even for ourselves. Prayer drives away the phantoms of Satan, makes us feel close to God. And with God near, one can face and endure everything with justice and merit.
• The day when the great altar of the Earth no longer heard praises and supplications of love, the Earth would cease to exist.

How to pray

• Daily prayer times: People pray too little in homes nowadays.
• Why and how to pray
• All creation can be a place of prayer if the creature knows how to make it so by raising his spirit to the Father.
• Isaac of Juttah's hut became the first prayer room
• Prayer is not in the act but in the feeling.
• The prayer of the Heart, a natural gift of Women
• Prayer must be true, not mechanical like the noise of a wheel on the road. Is it the noise or the wheel that makes the cart move? …The world will be more saved by the prayers of those who know how to pray than by noisy, useless, murderous battles.
• In fact, it is a prayer to pronounce the Name of God intending to adore Him or to make Him known to people who ignore Him.
• The prayer of the Hours: tell me how you pray, why you pray? - Surely I will tell you. You will then pray with Me. Dawn – morning – noon – None – dusk – evening – night.
• But one must also know how to pray without getting tired after the first prayers, and know how to To ask for good things. And also entrust yourself to God saying: "Yet let it be done what your Wisdom sees as most useful for us."

Request, supplication

• Prayer is a force. One obtains everything by prayer. How to pray    
• Jesus, during the fast in the desert, prays to his Father for Himself
• Jesus prays for Himself.
• I also declare to you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for in prayer, my Father in heaven will give it to them.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of May 13: Jesus gave me many people — relatives, friends, teachers, classmates and students — for whom I suffered, acted, prayed.
• Catechesis of July 7: Jesus explains in detail the Our Father.
• Catechesis of July 22: But if you see that a prayer remains unanswered, you can To Believe that it is flawed in the request that is made or in the faith. If it is flawed in the request, I who know do not grant you what would give you happiness for a moment and sorrow for the rest of your earthly life, and which sometimes could also give you troubles in the other because of the misuse you could make of my gift. If the prayer is flawed in faith, I do not hear or listen to it. The world no longer has faith and thus has lost hope. The world does not believe that God is an almighty Father. The world does not believe that God is a loving Father. If the world knew how painful it is for me not always to be able to help you and to make you happy!
• Catechesis of July 22: But come, poor children, come to me who burns with the desire to make you happy. Come to me who grieves at not being able to hold you to my breast and wipe your tears. Come to the Only One who gives you Good and Peace, and true and eternal love.
• Catechesis of December 22: The hour has come to avert, through prayer and immolation, the rigour of the torment that has begun. Suffering and faith make you acceptable to the Lord God, your Father. So speak in Confession of all. Take God by the bond of love. He, whom no power can bind, is like a tiny bird caught in a net when a Soul besieges it with love. He surrenders and blesses. Recall God's Goodness, not because He needs you to recall it to Him, but to show Him that you recall it. While the world blasphemes and kills, sing hosanna to the Lord and love. Love is more powerful than force and even conquers hell. Love conquers all, O my Beloved.

The Notebooks of 1944

• Catechesis of January 5: For Mary, living meant praying, and praying meant contemplating. Her Hours of prayer were abysses of ADoration, charity, pearls of inestimable value in the great treasure of her days.

In fundamental Christian texts

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• Prayer in Christian life: what is prayer?
• The universal Call to prayer
• Jesus prays and teaches to pray
• Prayer in the Church

In other sources

Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909 – 1943)

• Until last September, it had never happened in my life that I prayed even once, at least in the literal sense of the word. Never had I, aloud or mentally, addressed words to God. Never had I uttered a liturgical prayer. Sometimes I recited the Salve Regina, but only as a beautiful poem.
  Last summer, while doing Greek with T.... I gave him the word-for-word of the Pater in Greek. We had promised to learn it by Heart. I think he did not do it. Neither did I, at the time. But a few weeks later, while reading the Gospel, I told myself that since I had promised myself and it was Good, I had to do it. I did it. The infinite sweetness of this Greek text then so captured me that for a few days I could not help but recite it continuously. A week later I began the grape harvest. I recited the Pater in Greek each day before work, and I repeated it quite often in the vineyard.
  Since then I have imposed on myself the sole practice of reciting it once each morning with absolute attention. If during the recitation my attention wanders or falls asleep, even in the slightest way, I start again until I have obtained once an absolutely pure attention. Sometimes I then restart once more purely for pleasure, but I only do so if desire urges me.
  The virtue of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me each time, for although I experience it daily it exceeds every time my expectation.
  Sometimes the first words already tear my thought from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor viewpoint. Space opens. The infinity of ordinary space of perception is replaced by an infinity squared or sometimes cubed. At the same time this infinity of infinity fills completely with silence, a silence which is not absence of sound but the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of a sound. Noises, if any, reach me only after crossing this silence.
  Sometimes too, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present in person, but with a Presence infinitely more real, more poignant, clearer and fuller of love than that first time when He took me.
  Never could I have undertaken to tell you all this without the fact that I am leaving. And as I am leaving with more or less the thought of a probable death, it seems to me that I have no right to keep silent about these things. For after all, in all this it is not about me. It is only about God.
  "The Waiting for God" – La Colombe/Livre de poche editions – Paris 1963 - pp. 47-48

Marian apparitions of Medjugorje

• Message of December 18, 1986: "When you pray, you are so much more Good! You resemble flowers which, after the snow, are, in their indescribable colors, brilliant with Good to see. Likewise, dear children, after prayer you unfold more before God all that is Good to please Him. That is why, dear children, pray, open your life to the Lord so that He may make of you harmonious and beautiful flowers destined for paradise."