What Happens When I Pray?

Mark Shea answers the perennial question in a really fantastic piece. An excerpt:

...St. Augustine once said that the one who sings well prays twice. I agree wholeheartedly. In fact, I think (as we shall see) that prayer can well be thought of as a sort of music. However, many of us feel we have tin ears. Indeed, all of us at one time or another get stumped by prayer. How do you hear God's voice? Is it really possible to pray with the kind of authority I sometimes hear about? Am I all alone in this? Does God hear me? And if He does, will He really respond to me? How on earth does heaven speak?

If you have ever asked yourself any of these questions, join the club! So have all the saints from Abraham on down. Such doubt about our worthiness and inability to discern the guidance of the Holy Spirit is a sign of both our sickness (since partial deafness to the Spirit is a consequence of original sin) and our health (since awareness of that deafness is a safeguard against pride and megalomania). Indeed, so accustomed are we to our estrangement from God that some actually seem to think deafness to the Spirit's voice somehow necessary or a normal part of the common coin of our humanity.

Nonetheless, on the other side of that coin, we find Christ and His Apostles answering this notion by taking up the ceaseless refrain of the prophets: "Listen to me, my people, and live!" They repeatedly urge us to discern the voice of God, and they set us examples by doing so themselves. Indeed, Our Lord, Our Lady, the Apostles, Scripture, and Sacred Tradition all talk as if ordinary men, women, and children can and should discern and obey God's will. And indeed, throughout the history of the Church, we find this has in fact been done. Thus, the question is not whether but how we as modern Catholic Christians can tap into that reality...