Thinking about uniting ourselves closely to Christ I
was wondering what prayer is and it is connected with my relationship with Him. The Pope said earlier this month that “prayer, on the one
hand, must be very personal, a uniting of myself with God in my innermost
depths. It must be my struggle with Him, my search for Him, my gratitude for
Him and my joy in Him. Yet it is never something private of my individual ‘ego’
that does not concern others. Praying is essentially and also always praying in
the ‘we’ of God’s children. “In this ‘we’ alone are we children of Our Father,
which the Lord taught us to pray. This ‘we’ alone gives us access to the
Father. On the one hand our prayer must become more and more personal, must
touch and penetrate ever more deeply the nucleus of our ‘ego’. On the other, it
must always be nourished by the communion of those praying, by the unity of the
Body of Christ, in order truly to shape myself on the basis of God’s love” (Benedict
XVI, Homily for Episcopal Ordinations, 5 Feb 2011).