Chapter 128

On Prayer From a Book

“I have started to pray worse from prayer books.” This is no loss. Don’t ever take a prayer book in your hands. Prayer books are like conversation exercises, say French ones. While someone has not learned to speak freely, they memorize conversations, but when they get the knack of speaking, the conversations are forgotten. So it is with prayer books. They are needed while the soul begins to pray by itself, but when it already prays by itself, they can be set aside. Only when your own prayer does not flow should you pray with printed prayers to stir it up, and when your own prayer is stirred, set them aside. This is what the great intercessors did. They read, one a psalm, another a “Glory,” and then—having entered the spirit of prayer—they abandoned the psalms. You should know several prayers by heart, and also several psalms. But always, when prayer is on your heart, you can pray without a prayer book—in your own approach to God, with prostrations. Only avoid sloth and indulgence. For at once the enemy will approach and seem to pull your hand away from prayer. Understand his tricks.

(Letter 256. Vol. 2, p. 90–91)