“Pray without ceasing,” (1 Thes 5:17). One of the shortest verses in the New Testament is perhaps one of the most complex and challenging! Here, St. Paul commands us to live always and in all we do with a prayerful spirit and in a prayerful context. How?

Recently, our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV revealed a favorite teacher of prayer for him: Brother Lawrence, in his work “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Brother Lawrence was a 17th Century French Carmelite monk, whose masterwork of spirituality, though brief, has taught followers of Jesus to remain more constantly aware of the presence of God through a life of prayer. This rather brief work can change your life, as it did for our Holy Father.

To the recommendation of Pope Leo, I would like to suggest two other works that changed my life and taught me about communion with Christ that is prayer. The first very much addresses obstacles to prayer and then invites us into prayer; the second is the masterwork of instructing us to go deeper into prayer — written by one of our authoritative “doctors” of the Church.

The first book on prayer that changed my life (and still does!), by an unknown author, is “The Cloud of Unknowing.” Written in the last part of the 14th century in Middle English, the underlying message of this work suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God’s particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one’s mind and ego to the realm of “unknowing,” at which point one may begin to be granted a glimpse of the nature of God. While sounding quite lofty, the author suggests a practice that helps us come to a glimpse of the true nature of God — one that is beyond our ability to conceptualize but, at the same time, is one into which God himself can immerse us.

The author speaks of two “clouds” in prayer: a “cloud of forgetting” when we choose to surrender our expectations and images of God under a cloud where we forget these images that limit the ineffable God; and a “cloud of unknowing,” where we seek God under a veil where we “find” God by not seeking him, but instead resting and awaiting God to find us! All I can say (words fail me in speaking about the depth of prayer) is that this book is a sure and certain path to the true God, not containable by our minds and expectations, but ready to be in communion with each of us in prayer.

The second life-changing work is by the great Doctor of the Church, St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1587), “The Interior Castle,” sometimes called “The Mansions.” This masterpiece of spiritual guidance in prayer contains the basis for what St. Teresa felt should be the ideal journey of faith, comparing the contemplative soul to a castle with seven successive interior courts, or chambers, analogous to the seven mansions. The work was inspired by her vision of the soul as a diamond in the shape of a castle containing seven mansions, which she interpreted as the journey of faith through seven stages, ending with union with God. As a personal testimony, the first time I read this work I found it off-putting and strange; the second time I read it, it changed my life and my heart. In the work, St. Teresa evidences a great understanding of the human difficulties in prayer (“distractions”) as well as the possibility of being found by God through the primacy of God’s initiative in prayer rather than ours. Too often, we find prayer a great effort and one that can be exhausting. St. Teresa counsels us to find God by letting God find us. My summary fails to do justice to this masterwork.

Pope Leo has recommended an instruction to teach us how to pray always: Brother Lawrence’s “The Practice of the Presence of God.” add two more: “The Cloud of Unknowing” and St. Teresa of Avila’s “The Interior Castle.” These works originate from three different centuries —the 14th, 16th and 17th, but each speaks to the perennial human desire to find the God in prayer that desires to find us. Such rich works from various ages comfort us with the richness of our Catholic tradition — given to us down the centuries from Holy-Spirit-inspired authors who still speak to us today. When St. Paul instructed us to “pray always,” the Church has given us instructors from the ages that still teach us today. Surgite eamus — Rise, let us be on our way … our prayerful way … with Jesus … instructed by teachers from our beautiful Catholic tradition!