Prayer is not a discourse. It is a form of life, the life with God. That is why it is not confined to the moment of verbal statement.
For in a civilization which has lost the meaning of life, the most important thing a Christian can do is to live, and life, understood from the point of view of faith, has an extraordinary explosive force.
God is always present, always available. At whatever moment in which one turns to him the prayer is received, is heard, is authenticated, for it is God who gives our prayer its value and its character, not our interior dispositions, not our fervor, not our lucidity. The prayer which is pronounced for God and accepted by him becomes, by that very fact, a true prayer.
When God picks out a man and speaks to him, it is to engage him in a work, an action. Nowhere in Scripture do we find indeterminate or purely mystical vocation.
Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of creation. It makes history possible.
