every genuine prayer lifts man up toward God,
satisfies the desire for His hallowing presence, unlocks the heavenly gate
of mercy and bliss, and bestows upon man the beatific and liberating sense
of being a child of God. The intellect may question the effect of prayer
upon the physical, mental, or social constitution of man, or may declare
prayer to be pious self-deception. The religious spirit experiences in
prayer the soaring up of the soul toward union with God in consecrated
moments of our mortal pilgrimage. This is no deception. The man who prays
receives from the Godhead, toward whom he fervently lifts himself, the
power to defy fate, to conquer sin, misery, and death. "The Lord is nigh
to all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth."(868)

6. To pray, then, is to look up to God and to pour out before Him one's
wishes, thoughts, sorrows, and joys. Certainly the All-knowing does not
require to be told by us what we desire or what we need. "For there is not
a word in my tongue, but lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether."(869) But
we mortals merely aspire toward Him who bears the world on His eternal
arms, to express in His presence our agony and our jubilation, because we
are certain of His paternal sympathy. When we praise and extol Him for the
happiness and the many pleasures which He has granted us, He becomes the
Partaker and Protector of our fortune, just as He is our sympathetic
Helper when we cry out to Him under the burden of sin or grief, in the
anxiety of danger or of guilt. Every genuine prayer realizes deeply the
truth of the words, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain
thee."(870)

7. Self-expression before God in prayer has thus a double effect; it
strengthens faith in God's love and kindness, as well as in His all-wise
and all-bountiful prescience. But it also chastens the desires and
feelings of man, teaching him to banish from his heart all thoughts of
self-seeking and sin, and to raise himself toward the purity and the
freedom of the divine will and demand. The essence of every prayer of
supplication is that one should be in unison with the divine will, to sum
up all the wishes of the heart in the one phrase, "Do that which is good
in Thine own eyes, O Lord."(871) On the other hand, only the prayer which
avoids impure thoughts and motives can venture to approach a holy God, as
the sages infer from the words of Job, "There is no violence in my hands,
and my prayer