‘… the most widespread difficulty today turns not so much on how to pray but on why we should pray and that, as a consequence, we are witnessing a kind of demise of personal prayer.’
Enzo Bianchi
For close to two millennia Christians assumed the importance of prayer even if they themselves at times neglected to pray or prayed poorly. But in the past sixty years many have come to question why we should pray at all, seeing prayer as an escape from the responsibility of social action or as seeking ‘magical’ solutions to life’s problems. Others have argued that it is a waste of time praying to God who seems not to have responded to pleas to stop events like the holocaust or natural disasters from happening.
Enzo Bianchi considers these and other objections to prayer in the first part of this book. He shows that such objections can serve to purify our understanding of what precisely prayer is. Only then, having considered the question of why we should pray, does he address the important issue of how to pray. He shows that prayer, correctly understood, remains an irreplaceable element of Christian life.
Enzo Bianchi (b. 1943) studied economics at the University of Turin before moving to Bose, a small village in the north of Italy, where he thought to start a monastic community. In 1968 Br Enzo was joined by the first brothers and sisters and wrote the community rule. He is still the prior of the community, which numbers about eighty members, men and women, coming from five different countries. The community is also present in Jerusalem and in Ostuni and Assisi in Italy.
‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.’—Matthew 13:45-6.
The pearl of great price brings great joy to the person who discovers it. The Spiritual Pearls series aims to bring the knowledge of the Good News of Jesus Christ to readers by examining the Gospels, the nature of prayer and the avenues of Catholic spirituality and wisdom gained through the lived experience of its authors.
