Jesus, in essence, makes a revolution in the understanding and practice of prayer. It turns out that God has no need at all of our prayer requests. Moreover, the one who asks also does not need prayer. Someone may object: "Well, everything is clear with God, but people, when they pray, sometimes grasp their needs more clearly by putting them into words, and in a peaceful state become aware of their inner needs - as, generally speaking, their outer needs as well. In the end, prayer often serves precisely as a source of resolve to pursue conscious and clearly defined goals." All of this can be acknowledged as true to some degree, but such inner self-reflection can no longer really be called prayer - rather, meditation with elements of verbalization.
Still, meditation (in the sense of reflection or in the sense of silence) is not such a useless thing. But it too should have as its content not so much our isolated psychic life as the openness of heart and mind toward God and the circumstances of life. And the emphasis here should be placed precisely on God, who gives perspective and space to human life.
Jesus is speaking precisely of prayer as the striving of the whole human being toward God - the Source and Foundation of all. And the only real goal of prayer understood this way is to gain inner sensitivity to the movements of the Spirit, who alone makes people co-workers and like-minded friends of the God revealed in Christ. In that case every Christian man or woman receives the possibility of taking part in building His Kingdom and fulfilling His will, and therefore of realizing his or her calling and gifts, receiving His forgiveness and freedom, and giving them to those near us who are deprived of them.
