The first act in prayer is to establish relationship
Jesus told us that, when we pray, we should address God as Father. This is how he himself prayed. To address God as Father is to bring ourselves into a very personal relationship with God, who dwells in our hearts through his Spirit. We speak to him personally as a child to his father, who is responsible for and cares for his children, and so we approach him in love, knowing that he loves us.
True prayer is based on this intimate and close relationship. Straight away we will see that some forms of pseudo prayer are immediately excluded, such as transcendental meditation which is mindless repetition of words. It is not prayer at all because prayer is relationship and Christian prayer is relationship to God as Father. Nor is prayer which is addressed to the saints or to the blessed virgin Mary Christian prayer, because we are not related to the saints nor to the virgin Mary, but we are related to our heavenly Father through the Spirit. We do not have the spirit of the saints, or of the virgin Mary, but we do have the Spirit of the Father given to us in our heart and it is through this eternal Spirit that we offer our prayers. Relationship is the first principle of prayer.
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