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Prayer:
Lifting our Minds and Hearts to God
We lift our minds to God by fixing our attention on Him. We lift up our hearts to Him by love, which may be expressed as a loving glance.

It is a privilege of human beings and angels to be able to speak with God in prayer. It is through the grace of Jesus that we become children of God, and that we can come before Him as His very dear children. We can never forget that we are creatures, but it is from the supernatural standpoint of our new life in Christ that we come before Him.

Vocal Prayer
Vocal prayer is that prayer which comes from the mind and heart and is spoken by the lips. We may use our own words in praying to God, and it is well to do so often. It is through words, mental or vocal, that our prayer takes flesh. It is most important that the heart should be present to Him to whom we are speaking in prayer. But, knowing that we are limited human beings, we must not get too distressed if our prayer is not as focused as we would like it to be. Without anxiety, we humbly ask His assistance to do better.

Vocal prayer is an essential element of the Christian life, Jesus taught us a vocal prayer when He taught us the Our Father. He not only prayed aloud the liturgical prayers of the synagogue but, as the Gospels show, He raised His voice to express His personal prayer, from exultant blessing of the Father at the sea of Galilee (Mt.11:25-26), to His agonized prayer in the garden of Gethsemane (Mk.14:36) 
 

Prayer involves the whole Person
When we pray it is helpful to assume a respectful body posture, and to take a moment to place ourselves in the presence of God.

The need to involve the senses in interior prayer corresponds to a requirement of our human nature. We are body and spirit, and we experience the need to express our feelings externally. We must pray with our whole being to give due worship to God. God seeks worshippers who will adore Him in spirit and in truth, and, consequently, prayer that arises from the depths of the soul pleases Him. He also wants the external expressions that associate the body with interior prayer. So we kneel, bow our heads, genuflect, or close our eyes, while we reverently endeavor to give Him the attention of our body, mind, and spirit. We voice our sentiments of praise, adoration, thanksgiving, and petition because this renders Him the perfect homage that is His due. Prayer is internalized to the extent that we become aware of Him to whom we speak.

Prayer is due to God
Prayer is a debt we owe to God; a debt of adoration, because He is our Lord and Master; a debt of thanksgiving, because He is our first and greatest Benefactor, and a debt of sorrow, because we have offended Him by our sins, 

The Sign of the Cross
We usually begin and end our prayers with the Sign of the Cross, saying as we do so “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. By doing this we express our faith in two very important mysteries of our religion, the Blessed Trinity and the Redemption. When we say “In the name”, we express the truth that there is only one God. When we say “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, we express the truth that there are three distinct persons in God. When we make the form of the Cross on ourselves, we express the truth that the Son of God made man redeemed us by His death.