Praying with Your Whole Heart: Writings on Prayer by St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Catherine of Siena, an anonymous English monk of the fourteenth century, and Thomas à Kempis
"When the soul has passed through the doctrine of Christ crucified, with true love of virtue and hatred of vice, and has arrived at the house of self-knowledge and entered into it, it remains, with its door barred, in watching and constant prayer, separated entirely from the consolations of the world. Why does it shut itself in this manner? It does so out of fear, knowing its own imperfections, and also from the desire of arriving at pure and generous love. And because the soul sees and knows well that in no other way can it arrive at pure love, with a lively faith it waits for my arrival, through the increase of grace in it."
St. Catherine of Siena, Praying with Your Whole Heart
This is a deceptively simple book, written by four experts on the Christian spiritual life. Each of these Christian mystics writes with clarity and from a depth of personal experience, and yet what each describes is something that is ultimately beyond description. That's what we mean by the book being deceptively simple: you cannot obtain what they describe by simply reading.
Praying with Your Whole Heart is a collection of four distinct but united voices on the subject of how to pray, and how to reach a deeper level of intimacy with God in your prayer life. In this book, you will meet some of the most passionate Christians in the history of our faith: St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Catherine of Siena, an anonymous English monk of the fourteenth century, and Thomas à Kempis. Their viewpoints are presented chronologically, and short biographies of each may be found at the conclusion of these collected thoughts.
