Learning to pray is an on-going process which continues throughout our spiritual journey. Fr Peter Ward here offers support and encouragement to those who are seeking to deepen their prayer and develop their spirituality. In doing so, he follows the only story he knows intimately – his own. Starting with the struggle to pray in the recited words and regular practices of his early years, he follows the journey through meditation to the prayer of simplicity. Even then he realised that he had not ‘arrived’ and was gradually made aware of contemplation as a further stage in prayer. As he got closer to understanding contemplation, from reading the works of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross among others, his own tentative attempts are described – with all their joys and all their sorrows. There is still a long way to go and there is no certainty of ever arriving at a stage of full satisfaction in prayer.
Silenced by Prayer is a warm, personal companion for the many people who are struggling to follow the Christian path of prayer, and who have, as well as their happy moments, their moments of dissatisfaction and need for perseverance.
Fr Peter Ward, a Redemptorist priest, was educated in Ireland, Brussels and Rome. He worked for twenty-one years as a missionary in India and is currently a retreat preacher in Clonard Monastery in Belfast. His first book, The God of Welcomes, was published by The Columba Press in 1996.
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