Within the Catholic tradition, there are many ways to pray. Yet, while there are smaller books, books on praying with saints and contemporary figures, volumes assembling groups of individual prayers, or prayer within one particular strand of Catholic spirituality, there is no truly comprehensive work available on how to learn, practice, and teach ways of prayer in the broad Roman Catholic tradition. This handbook breaks new ground, offering forty important voices on forty essential topics for a comprehensive look at the learning, practice, and teaching of all that it means to pray in the Catholic tradition. Topics include:
- Types of spirituality (including Carmelite, Franciscan, Ignatian, Dominican and other major schools) and how they frame prayer and prayerfulness
- Liturgical prayer
- New Testament scriptural approaches to prayer
- Praying with the Psalms
- Contemplation
- Liturgy of the Hours
- Conversational prayer
- Resistances to prayer
- Journaling as prayer
- Enhancing a spirit of prayerfulness
- Praying in Ordinary Time
- Praying through grief, suffering, loss and pain
- Dealing with distractions in prayer
- The essentials of Catholic prayer; and much more.