A good book for Advent

Recently, on the Book of Face, somebody was asking for people’s favorite books on prayer.

Mine is Simon Tugwell’s PRAYER IN PRACTICE, which immediately won my heart with the anxiety-relieving remark on the first page to the effect that the very first thing Paul tells us about prayer is that we do not know how to do it.

As a convert, I assumed everybody in the Catholic communion knew what they were doing with all this mystical communion stuff. Turns out even Paul had no idea how to pray. His confidence is not in his own Mastery of Spiritual Disciplines, but in the promise that the Holy Spirit in us prays through us and teaches us how to follow along.

This includes, (I hasten to add for those tempted to hare off and “liberate ourselves” from the Church in a welter of private mysticism), the fact that one of the chief things the Spirit uses to teach us is the Mass itself, since all our worship is done on the coattails of Jesus’ supreme act of worship shared with us in the Eucharist.

Check it out if you are looking for some good Advent reading (click on the image below).