We are all anxious that God should hear and grant our prayers. He is always ready to do so. The obstacles are always on our side, and one of the chief of these is a want of humility. If God resists the proud, He is not likely to hear their prayers; hence, one of the first requisites of success in my prayers is that I should humble myself before God. Then, and not until then, will my prayer reach the ears of the Most High. "The prayer of him that humbleth himself pierces the clouds."
One of the most dangerous forms of pride is a contempt for others, and one that we may be very prone to without realizing its ruinous effects upon our prayers. When the self-complacent Pharisee thanked God that he was not like the poor publican, he probably was quite unconscious that his prayer was offensive to God. Pride blinded him. So it often blinds us; and we little think, when in prayer we secretly congratulate ourselves on being free from certain faults which we see in our neighbors, that all the while we are displeasing God by thus harshly judging others.
How are we to be humble in prayer? We should be humble in prayer by dwelling on our own miseries and the good points that we see in those around or that we should see if our own pride did not make us blind to others' superiority to us and the fact that the graces God has liberally bestowed on us make our ingratitude and our want of correspondence to them all the more culpable.
- text from Humility, Thirty Short Meditations by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ