Learning to Pray
Before Mass this evening, I read this passage in Father Irénée Hausherr‘s Prière de vie, vie de prière, surely one of the most helpful books ever written:
‘There is talk of the “particular friendships” that are an obstacle to prayer. They are indeed. But it is above all “particular enmities” that render prayer impossible. Do not, then, do anything at all that would hinder you from giving yourself up, immediately afterwards, to peaceful silent prayer. For this to happen, “may God walk alongside you” [as Evagrius wrote]. That is to say: may no enterprise of yours be realised without prayer. The true path to contemplative prayer is life itself. It would be an illusion to dream of union with God by some means other than that practice which leads to contemplation.’
