In terms of the spiritual, we are mainly on the take. We have the life and words of Christ, the sacraments, the ministering magisterium. The answer is prayer, our personal response, our reach to the Lord. Good works while essential, are, after all, horizontal and in many ways easier. We see need and act.
Prayer is interior, an intimate overture.
This, not the other, is the one-way street, and it is of our making. Our problem is that we confine prayer to specific times and place, communally at Mass or privately when periodic needs arise. We limit its potential when, in reality, prayer permits any posture or circumstance, brief expression or lengthy reflection. The paradigm for prayer maximizing God's presence in everyday life is, to me, a priest friend for whom God is not a distant, sometime acquaintance but a constant companion even in mundane situations. His natural ease with this, as a normal practice, upsets our notion that prayer means us, on our knees, in a room, alone.