Prayer is about a personal relationship.

Prayer at its most basic level is conversation with God. This seems obvious, but it harbors an awesome reality. To converse with someone implies that that someone wants to pay attention to you, otherwise you have a monologue, not a conversation. The mere existence of prayer, then, implies that God is paying attention, that he is interested in spending time with you. Christian prayer is an invitation from God to the one who prays – it starts with God, not with you. The whole Christian edifice is built on this simple but awe-inspiring reality. The Catechism highlights it in its very first numbers: “At every time and in every place, God draws close to man… God never ceases to draw man to himself”. God is always drawing close to you, and he is always drawing you closer to Him. That means He is always thinking of you, just like the Good Shepherd who is always thinking of and watching over his sheep. Prayer starts here.

[…] the essence of Christian prayer is relationship. As the Catechism puts it: “This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer (CCC 2558). Prayer, then, is more than just a dry religious duty, more than self-centered and self-sufficient self-help techniques; Christian prayer is a friendship with God in Christ. It’s being led by the Good Shepherd to ever richer pastures in the Father’s kingdom. (Fr. John Bartunek’s book “A Guide to Christian Meditation: How to Engage More Deeply in Personal Prayer.”)