Why Pray?

Father Thomas Dubay, author of Prayer Primer : Igniting a Fire Within, says it brilliantly.  Excerpts:

...Scripture says it best of all. With a charming invitation the Lord shouts "Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come .... Why spend money on what is not bread, your wages on what fails to satisfy .... Pay attention, come to me; listen, and your soul will live" (Is 55:1-3, JB). Nothing less can bring us to life. And Isaiah himself keeps vigil through the night as his spirit yearns for his Lord (Is 26:9). He practices what he proclaims.

The psalmist is of like mind: his soul thirsts for the living God (Ps 42:2-3). Like a parched desert he pines for his Lord, for only in him does he find rest (Ps 63:1; 62:1). The inspired writer knows that God must be our consuming concern, for pursuing him, adoring him, loving him, being immersed in him can alone profoundly delight and fill us. Anything less than Everything is not enough.

The New Testament has the same message, for the Fountain has appeared in the flesh. He declares in the Sermon on the Mount that they are blessed who hunger and thirst after holiness (Mt 5:6), and his Mother proclaims in her Magnificat that the Lord fills the hungry with every good thing (Lk 1:53). Jesus explicitly invites all those who are thirsty to come to him for a quenching with living water (Jn 7:37). At the very end of both Testaments this same invitation is extended to everyone: let all the thirsty come forward to be forever quenched with the life-giving waters, that is, an eternal enthrallment in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit seen face to face (Rev 22:17).

Prayer life is therefore profoundly rooted in the needs of our human nature. Without it we are frustrated creatures. All the way from the beginnings in vocal prayer through meditation, which leads to the summit of contemplation, this prayerful immersion in the indwelling Trinity gradually transforms us from one glory to another as we are being turned into the divine image (2 Cor 3:18). Here alone do men and women become "perfect in beauty" (Ezek 16:13-14). We can understand why Henri de Lubac was prompted to say that man is truly man only when the light of God is reflected in a face upturned in prayer...