St. Augustine Answers 101 Questions About Prayer

About the Book: 

How can I pray better?

How do I know God hears my prayers?
How can I ‘pray always,’ as Jesus commands?
Why must I ask for things God already knows I need?

Such were the questions that perplexed a young North African man, Augustine Aurelius (354-430), whose intense yearning for God led him into a profound and lifelong encounter with Christ in prayer.  There Augustine found answers to these questions and to countless more — answers not grounded in his own brilliance, but in prayer itself.  In time, Augustine became a bishop and a Father of the Church, and has long been numbered among her saints. Yet of all the Church’s saints, not one expresses the longing for God more beautifully, or explores the nature of prayer more helpfully, than St. Augustine. His words speak to us today as freshly as they did to his contemporaries.

St. Augustine wrote many books, but never one devoted to prayer alone. Indeed, his teachings on prayer are scattered in many places. So from over 200 works, Fr. Cliff Ermatinger has gathered and translated Augustine’s teachings on prayer, and now presents them here in a simple question-and-answer format. What emerges is nothing less than a rich new “catechism on prayer” by one of the Church’s greatest saints.

My Comments:  


This is a great little book to use for spiritual reading.  Each of the 101 questions is answered in somewhere between a paragraph and page with quotes from St. Augustine's works, which often include scripture references.  The questions are all listed in the table of contents, making it easy to jump to a topic of interest, or you can read the book through for a more over-all picture.  It is packed with ideas and I'd recommend a slow reading (a question or two a day) with reflection, rather than trying to read all the way through in a sitting or two (though at just over 100 pages, a complete read through, without reflection, doesn't take too long).  


I'd like to thank The Catholic Company for providing a complimentary review copy of this book. Please visit their product page for ordering information. 
The Catholic Company is an on-line source for Catholic books and gifts.