Why a life without prayer leads us away from God

If we don't ever pray in our daily lives, it will be much more difficult for us to love God or draw close to him.

Life certainly can get busy, but it should never get so busy that we never pray.

We need to make time for prayer, forcing ourselves to schedule prayer into our daily lives.

If we don’t make prayer a priority, we will slowly drift farther and farther away from God, loving him less and less over time.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains how essential prayer is to our spiritual lives:

Prayer is a vital necessity. Proof from the contrary is no less convincing: if we do not allow the Spirit to lead us, we fall back into the slavery of sin. How can the Holy Spirit be our life if our heart is far from him?
CCC 2744

Any relationship will suffer if there is no communication. For example, if you never speak with your husband or wife, it will not take long for you to love that person less and eventually, you will even question why you are married to that person.

This reality is even true for basic friendships. If you never talk to your childhood friend after you graduate from high school, your friendship will weaken and you may even forget about your friend.

In a similar way, if you never talk to God in prayer, you will eventually forget about him and be more likely to sin.

You will not feel God’s presence in your life and your actions will reflect that reality.

Prayer leads to virtue

The Catechism quotes St. John Chrysostom on this topic, explaining how a life of prayer is intimately connected to a life of virtue:

Nothing is equal to prayer; for what is impossible it makes possible, what is difficult, easy. . . . For it is impossible, utterly impossible, for the man who prays eagerly and invokes God ceaselessly ever to sin.
CCC 2744

St. Alphonsus Liguori puts it in a more direct manner when he writes, “Those who pray are certainly saved; those who do not pray are certainly damned” (CCC 2744).

This is why daily prayer is vitally important to everyone’s spiritual life.

If we do not pray, we will be less likely to recognize Jesus in our neighbor. We may not even recognize Jesus at the end of our earthly life, having distanced ourselves from him by neglecting our daily prayers.