Is My Prayer Good Enough?

Have you sometimes felt that your personal prayers might not be lofty enough, pious enough, to send up to Jesus and Mary? In the compact prayer book Blessed Be God (1925), the authors address this hesitation in their opening chapter on "How to Pray":

People often find it difficult to pray because they have an exaggerated notion of prayer, not really understanding what it means and erroneously believing that it consists in very lofty thoughts, which must be expressed in correspondingly elevated words and sentences; whereas the very opposite is the truth. How simple are the Our Father and the Hail Mary! How unaffected the thoughts and words of the centurion, the leper, the blind man, and others mentioned in the Gospel, who sought help from our Lord and were heard!

 Neither is it necessary for a prayer to be long to be perfect; it need not be said in any particular place or at any special time; nor need it be said kneeling or standing. We may turn our hearts to God at all times, in all places, and in any posture of body, whether we be in the street or in the church, at home or abroad; and this is not only prayer, but devout prayer. 

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From Blessed Be God: A Complete Catholic Prayer Book by Very Rev. Charles J. Callan, O.P., S.T.M., and Very Rev. John A. McHugh, O.P., S.T.M., published by P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1925.

Pictured: Innocence by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.