On the Difficulty of Prayer

Anyone who has ever tried to pray will have experienced difficulties; yet there tends to be an unspoken assumption that for saints and mystics prayer is easy.  The open and totally honest way in which Teresa of Avila admits to her own problems in prayer is one of her most valuable legacies; that she, too, found prayer difficult is not only endearing but also immensely reassuring.  She writes of her trials, “Over a period of several years, I was more occupied in wishing my hour of prayer were over, and in listening whenever the clock struck, than in thinking of things that were good.  Again and again I would rather have done any severe penance that might have been given me than practice recollection as a preliminary to prayer.  Whenever I entered the oratory I used to feel so depressed that I had to summon up all my courage to make myself pray at all.”

– from Teresa of Avila, 1993, by Shirley du Boulay

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