St. Augustine on prayer part 1
The Latin:
Sed rursus quaeri potest, sive rebus, sive verbis orandum sit, quid opus sit ipsa oratione, si Deus iam novit quid nobis necessarium sit: nisi quia ipsa orationis intentio cor nostrum serenat et purgat, capaciusque efficit ad excipienda divina munera, quae spiritaliter nobis infunduntur. Non enim ambitione precum nos exaudit Deus, qui semper paratus est dare suam lucem nobis, non visibilem, sed intelligibilem et spiritalem: sed nos non semper parati sumus accipere, cum inclinamur in alia, et rerum temporalium cupiditate tenebrarum.
The English:
But again one might ask whether we are to pray by words or deeds and what need there is for prayer, if God already knows what is needful for us. But it is because the act of prayer clarifies and purges our heart and makes it more capable of receiving the divine gifts that are poured out for us in the spirit. God does not give heed to the ambitiousness of our prayers, because he is always ready to give to us his light, not a visible light but an intellectual and spiritual one: but we are not always ready to receive it when we turn aside and down to other things out of a desire for temporal things.
[From On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, taken directly from here.]
