CCC 2784 The free gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and new life. Praying to our Father should develop in us two fundamental dispositions:
First, the desire to become like him: though created in his image, we are restored to his likeness by grace; and we must respond to this grace.
We must remember. .. and know that when we call God “our Father” we ought to behave as sons of God.1
You cannot call the God of all kindness your Father if you preserve a cruel and inhuman heart; for in this case you no longer have in you the marks of the heavenly Father’s kindness.2
We must contemplate the beauty of the Father without ceasing and adorn our own souls accordingly.3
CCC 2785 Second, a humble and trusting heart that enables us “to turn and become like children”:4 for it is to “little children” that the Father is revealed.5
[The prayer is accomplished] by the contemplation of God alone, and by the warmth of love, through which the soul, molded and directed to love him, speaks very familiarly to God as to its own Father with special devotion.6
Our Father: at this name love is aroused in us. .. and the confidence of obtaining what we are about to ask. .. What would he not give to his children who ask, since he has already granted them the gift of being his children?7
1 St. Cyprian, De Dom. orat. 11 PL 4:526B.
2 St. John Chrysostom, De orat Dom. 3: PG 51, 44.
3 St. Gregory Of Nyssa, De orat. Dom. 2: PG 44, 1148B.
4 Mt 18:3.
5 Cf. Mt 11:25.
6 St. John Cassian, Coll. 9, 18 PL 49, 788c.
7 St. Augustine, De serm. Dom. in monte 2, 4, 16: PL 34, 1276.