Today, we consider two expressions of prayer. On one side God’s presence, which means being internally and continuously with God in a silent way, which, on the other side, needs nourishment: the vocal prayer, which expresses itself with words, images and thoughts.

This vocal prayer must spring especially out of our heart, our pains, hopes, joys and sufferings; out of the shame for our sins, as well as out of gratitude for the good, thus being a wholly personal prayer. But we also need the support of those prayers which have shaped the meeting of all the Church with God (without this help, our personal prayer and our image of God become subjective and finally are more the reflection of ourselves than of the living God).

—In the prayer’s formulas which at first arose from Israel’s faith and afterwards from the faith of those who pray as members of the Church we learn to know God and to know ourselves: they are a prayer school.