It should be of no surprise that prayer has preeminent importance for our spiritual lives. Yet hopefully now we are able to see why that is so. It is through prayer that our relationship with God plays out from day to day, and through it that our knowledge and love of Him grows and matures. As we saw above, prayer is essentially a humble attentiveness to God, seeking both from Him all that we need to do for Him all that He desires. In the end, both to receive from God or to give back to Him are two movements of the same act: to love.