There’s a long-standing argument in the Church: some say true prayer comes only from the heart, without scripts or set words.
But the people of God have always had a liturgy.
In Judaism, prayer has never been a free-for-all. It is ordered: blessings in the morning, Psalms through the day, prayers for rising, sleeping, eating, working, rejoicing, grieving.
The early Church didn’t invent this—they inherited it.
The point of liturgy is not to replace the heart, but to guide it.
Liturgy teaches us to give thanks when we feel thankless, to petition when we are weary, and to confess when we would rather hide.
And most importantly—it points us away from our scattered, self-centered thoughts and toward the heart of God.
Anyone who has prayed knows that the “heart” can be just as empty as the mouth. Prayer can feel dry, whether it’s spontaneous or scripted.
This is why the Jewish tradition speaks of kavanah—intention.
Both prayer and action must be done with purpose, for the sake of God.
So yes, it’s possible to pray the liturgy without meaning it. But it’s also possible to pray from the heart and be speaking only to yourself.
Liturgy trains our hearts to mean what we pray, and to pray what we ought to mean.
It hands us the words of Scripture, the words of the Church, the words of the faithful before us—so that when our own words fail, we are still led into the presence of God.
As St. James reminds us:
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” — James 4:3
Liturgy teaches us to ask rightly.
Not for what our hearts want, but for what our souls need.
So we pray the prayers given to us, with the intention to meet God in them.
And through them, we are drawn into His heart.
