Resumo de How To Pray - David Torkington

How to Pray

David Torkington is a Catholic journalist, author and speaker, who writes and lectures about prayer and Christian spirituality. He has had a regular column in The Catholic Herald for many years but now writes exclusively for The Universe in this country and writes for many other periodicals and newspapers in the USA and Canada.

In How to Pray: A Practical Guide, David Torkington sums up the premise of his book with a quotation of St. Teresa of Avila, 'There is only one way to perfection and that is to pray. If anyone points in another direction, then they are deceiving you.' Torkington, a well-known lecturer, retreat master, author and spiritual director, writes, 'True freedom doesn't mean to be free from, but to be free for the most important thing in our lives, which is to love and to experience being loved.' His book of 40 meditations and appendix of morning and evening prayers is filled with a menagerie of ways prayer brings God's love to us and ours to him through what he calls 'divine union.'
Filled with quotations from Catholic spiritual masters, Torkington writes of St. Augustine, who used the analogy of being a living sponge to 'show that we are not only surrounded at all times by the love of God, but are penetrated through and through by His all-pervading presence.' Whether referring to the contemplative beauty of the Rosary, wisdom from the desert fathers, the intimacy of Holy Communion, intercessory prayers and prayers of petition, Scripture, the Passion, Lectio Divina, Stations of the Cross, the Sacred Heart, St. Ignatius' exercises, and much more, Torkington explains that there is no such thing as private prayer in the Christian tradition even when we are praying alone because we are 'united with all those who are in the family of Christ.' This is why, he states, 'sincere prayer of the least of us is powerful far beyond our own personal and spiritual resources alone.' He also writes, 'God is neither male nor female, but the qualities of maleness and femaleness can be found uniquely balanced and brought to perfection in Him and perfectly expressed in His love for all that He created.'
This book is sure to appeal to a broad audience of Catholic readers and those who minister to them, who believe of prayer that 'there are no perfect means, just different means for different people at different stages of their spiritual journey.'
How to Pray reveals in forty, easy-to-read, chapters how ordinary people can replace the fear and anxiety of today's world with the profound inner peace generated by God's rule of Love. Step by step, it explains how our participation in prayer, radically empowers our lives beyond anything we could achieve by our own efforts. In simple language, it guides us in the practical steps we must take to imbue our lives with the Power of Spiritual Transformation which animated the Life of Christ. This little book is a practical guide to the spiritual life. It explains why our spirituality is misguided and crawls at a snail's pace when it centers in our human effort. It explains, on the other hand, how it "takes eagle's wings" when it centers in God through prayer. Then our effort is joined to the Infinite Power that created the Universe. Through such Power our lives are transformed into the Peace of God, a Peace that surpasses all understanding, and this Gift is available to anyone who seeks it through the power of prayer. Over the years, I've studied many of the books on prayer written by saints and spiritual writers. Without question, How to Pray ranks as one of the best.

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