Courage to Pray

The discovery of prayer, of man's relationship with God and the world, of faith and love, is what gives human beings hope and courage to pray. This little book points to that discovery as a guide for those who wish to end their isolation and enter into communion with the Infinite.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, who writes about prayer in a way that shows how profoundly acquainted he is with the true conflicts and aspirations that are at the root of man's spiritual being, says this: "Prayer is the search for God, encounter with God, and going beyond this encounter in communion. Thus it is an activity, a state and also a situation; a situation both with respect to God and to the created world... Prayer is born of the discovery that the world has depths--that we are not only surrounded by visible things but that we are also immersed in and penetrated by invisible things. And this invisible world is both the presence of God, the supreme, sublime reality, and our own deepest truth."

For Georgres LeFebvre, a Benedictine monk, prayer is being open to God's mystery, but it is also our awareness that we are children of God: "Our self-awareness is then bound to be a prayer... Prayer is being. It is not something added on, it is being aware of what we are. It is and remains our deepest truth even when we walk in darkness."