There are three skills that, once learned, change everything. The first is learning to walk. The second is learning to read. The third is learning to pray.
Life can be confusing. So many choices. So many temptations. Addictions threaten to encroach on our lives. Religious liberty is under attack. Marriages struggle. People fall prey to desperation, and the desperate mind always makes bad decisions.
Hope is as near to us as the presence of God in our lives and the promise of Jesus that the gates of hell would never prevail against his Church. Fifteen minutes of solitude each day can transform confusion into confidence, and desperation into peace. Learn tools to be increasingly mindful of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence and gentle leading.
Beginning with the prayer life of Jesus, Ed Wills guides the reader though the prayer practices of saints through the centuries. After learning about the prayer techniques of the Desert Fathers, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. John of the Cross, and others, he will guide you in developing your own synthesis of prayer life that can inspire you and enrich every area of your life.
Prayer should be a dynamic communion between us and our God. It is a communion in which we are strengthened, encouraged, inspired, instructed, and transformed.
This book will introduce you to several methods of prayer used by those who persevered in their own spiritual battle until they experienced the reality of God’s presence and the power of his voice in their lives. You will notice some common themes in these modalities of prayer. You will also notice how each is personalized to the individual.
By studying the prayer lives of different saints, we develop a tool box of prayer from which we can draw the tools that are best suited for a particular situation and that are most comfortable in our own hands.
As you journey on your own odyssey of prayer, I encourage you to learn from each of these masters so that you can form a synthesis in your own prayer life. You, too, can know God’s presence and hear his voice.
It is my hope and prayer that you will find in this little book the path to know God more fully and the encouragement to listen to his voice more closely. Know him. If all we know about God is what others have told us about him, we miss the best part of being human. That is that we, who are made in God’s image, may commune with the Holy Trinity as our Father, our Brother, our Friend, and our Lover.
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“Ed has a great gift for making the profound truths of the mystics understandable in everyday language for everyday people.” Fr. John Bolderson
“For many years as a Catholic, I have studied and learned a great deal about God. But through the techniques Ed teaches, I can say that I have come to a true experience of God.” Mike B., Catholic Worker House
“I am grateful for the simple suggestions of change to my attitude and actions in prayer that Ed Wills shares in his book. Now my soul experiences satisfaction through prayer that it only imagined, and I am filled with deeper peace than I’ve ever known.” Cheryl Ann Wills,
author of Who is Jesus? 1st Century Eyewitnesses Tell Their Stories
“Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.” Thomas Merton