Most of us learned the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” as children. They’re the standard prayers our parents taught us, and learning them was not only time learning how to pray but was time spent with our parents. What we can tend to forget after we’ve learned these prayers is that praying is supposed to be time spent with others—specifically the supreme Other: God. In fact, we can easily go deaf to the opening words of those prayers. But those first words are greetings to God and Our Lady: Jesus teaches us to address God as Our Father, Who is in Heaven, and “Hail, Mary” is basically just “Hello, Mary.” Both prayers open a conversation with God and the Blessed Mother.

Ultimately, that’s what prayer is: talking with God. All too often we think of our prayers as asking God for some favor, or as reciting memorized prayers. But these prayers should lead us into a deeper and more authentic dialogue with God, just as learning those prayers were occasions for us to develop our relationship with our parents.

We have the privilege of being able to converse with God anywhere, at any time. Even a casual glance toward Heaven or a quick “Jesus, I trust in You” can bring us into a more personal relationship with our Lord. But of course a more sustained period of prayer—ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes a day dedicated to being with God undistractedly—can increase our awareness of God’s presence in our lives and our trust in Him. Time spent reading His Sacred Word in the Bible, reflecting on how Scripture speaks to us and applies to our life situation now, and discovering in those pages how God sees us, is how we begin to hear Him speaking to us. And we respond to Him by telling Him how that Word strikes us—whether with trust, or doubt, or a mixture of both, or curiosity, or even being confused and baffled. This is how we cultivate a deeper and truer prayer life, and how our relationship with God becomes more real and more important for us.

Especially during this Easter season, when we continue to celebrate the fundamental belief of our faith that Christ is risen from the dead and now lives forever, we should remind ourselves that our God is always alive and always present to us. Jesus promised His disciples “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” Trusting in this promise means believing that He’s there for us even today, open and ready to speak to us in prayer.