Letter to a Friend on the Prayer of the Heart
Dom André Poisson
Bishop Erik Varden (Translator)
ISBN 9781784699277
eISBN 9781784698898
ASIN B0GZ6T494P
CTS Booklet D860
To be honest I pick up any new title available from the Catholic Truth Society. With my dual form of dyslexia the eBooks make reading so much easier. Over the last several years, I have read many books from the Catholic Truth Society, in fact over 465 of them as of the reading of this volume; many read more than once; this all since the spring of 2018. And I have about half that many on my ‘to be read’ pile. Most were good reads; some were great reads; and a few are exceptional. And this is an excellent little volume.
The description of this volume is:
“If you wish to learn the prayer of the heart: “I want to point you in a certain direction, to indicate a path you must follow, without knowing in advance exactly where it will lead. The prayer of the heart is not a goal to be reached. It is a manner of being, a manner of listening and moving forward.”
"The prayer of the heart is not a goal to be reached. It is a manner of being, a manner of listening and moving forward."
"Lord, teach us to pray!" is a cry that stirs in the heart of every believer. Yet for those of us who wish to practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, we need an experienced guide, someone who has already passed through the landscape we are preparing to enter and knows its paths and pitfalls. Such guides are hard to find, however, which is why reliable books are such a blessing.
Bishop Erik Varden, himself a renowned spiritual writer, found this beautiful book in a Parisian bookshop. What was then a poorly bound edition has long since come apart. Yet no single text, he says, had helped him to pray more. Now translated into English by Bishop Varden, this brief treatise by a Carthusian monk offers an excellent guide to the "prayer of the heart", a prayer that breaks open our hearts and transforms our being as we dare to aspire to "become participants of the divine nature".
"I rejoice, simply, to recommend with all my heart this little book. It opened my eyes to ‘the boundless riches of Christ’; it pierced my heart with the light of a trust I had previously only known notionally … because its author speaks with authority, of things he knows." (Bishop Varden)”
About the author’s we are informed:
“Dom André Poisson was born Étienne Poisson at Douce, in Maine-et-Loire, on 28 February 1923. He made his first profession at La Grande Chartreuse on 2 February 1948 and his solemn profession on 6 October 1953. He was ordained a priest on 13 March 1954. In 1967 he was elected Prior and General of the Order, dedicating himself to the aggiornamento of the Order following the indications of the Second Vatican Council. He resigned in 1997 and was sent to be Prior at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration (in the USA). In 1999 he went to Vedana, Italy as Chaplain to Carthusian nuns. He returned to La Grande Chartreuse in May 2001, and died there on 20 April 2005.”
and
“Bishop Erik Varden OCSO is a monk and bishop, born in Norway in 1974. In 2002, after ten years at the University of Cambridge, he joined Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest. Pope Francis named him bishop of Trondheim in 2019.”
The chapters and sections in the book are:
‘Lord, Teach Us to Pray’
Introduction
Abba, Hallowed Be Thy Name
Seeing with the Heart
Towards Purity of Heart
My Body as Place of Encounter with the Word
The Spirit Prays Within Me
Discovering the Father’s Love in My Weakness
Entering Silence
I highlighted a few passages while reading this volume, some of them are:
“The seventy-two were conscious that the peace they carried exceeded them. Its source lay outside themselves. It sprang from the presence in their midst of Jesus, who alarmed them all the more with predictions of his imminent departure. How might they continue to pursue his peace, and remain within its orbit, with him no longer there?”
“He not only taught, but showed, what utter attention to the Father’s will looks like. This was how the disciples, too, wished to ground their existence.”
“Jesus’s response was immediate and precise. He gave his disciples the formula we know as the Our Father. It constitutes the core of Christian prayer. From the beginning of the Church, great teachers of the faith have expounded it, drawing out its various aspects.”
“And how can I practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, on guard against both self-delusion and the illusions of the devil, who tries to trip up those who seek to grow in godliness?”
“There is no lack of persons with diplomas in “spiritual direction”: they are two a penny. But a true spiritual father or mother is a rarity. It was ever thus; but perhaps the sparseness is especially acute in our day.”
“That is why reliable books are such a blessing. A book can never replace a conversation; but immersion in the testimony of a man or woman of God can become conversation.”
“I do not intend to draw up a rigid framework or fixed structure. Rather, I want to point you in a certain direction, to indicate a path you must follow, without knowing in advance exactly where it will lead. The prayer of the heart is not a goal to be reached. It is a manner of being, a manner of listening and moving forward.”
“When I pray, I do not address the God of the philosophers, nor even, you might say, the God of the theologians. I speak to my Father, or rather, our Father. To be more precise still, I speak to him whom Jesus so intimately called Abba.”
“That is what I mean when I pray, ‘Abba, hallowed be thy name’. May you, Abba, be perfectly yourself in me. May your name of Father become perfect reality in the relation that is growing between us.”
“In order really to know God, I must relinquish all my securities. I must eliminate the distance which thoughts and preconceptions have let me keep with regard to him. I must own my vulnerability. However well I have kept it hidden, I must, in the clear light of day, accept it and live through it, which is to say: I must permit my heart’s true responses to express themselves.”
“If I want to cleanse my being, to remove its blemish, I must begin by purifying my heart.”
“Proceeding in this way, we gradually develop the habit of returning to him ceaselessly, above all when faced with the shadowy, dark, and troubling sides of ourselves.”
“We cannot enter the prayer of the heart unless we accept to live deliberately and determinedly at the level of our body.”
“Our sin is not cleansed symbolically, but by bloodshed, by blood gushing from the Body of Jesus. In his flesh he truly died and rose again. Both our bodies and our souls are saved by his material resurrection.”
“We stop thinking of prayer as something that goes on in the head, in imaginings or systems of thought. We enter into our heart. There we find a disordered world of feelings and wounds. They spring from our heart and need purification. We then discover the effective possibility of integrating all these wounds of our heart into the flow of the Redemption by exposing them to the light and by offering them deliberately to the redemptive work of Jesus.”
“We also need silence in the depth of our heart, in so far as it overlaps with our will: any desire other than that of doing the Father’s will must be pacified. Instead of reaching out to impose itself on the rest of my being, my will, too, must remain utterly at God’s disposal, in a state of listening and welcome.”
I hope those quotes give you a feel for this excellent volume. The first third is the introduction and some excellent background. This book was very moving. It would have been worth it for the introduction alone. This book was so good that as soon as I finished it I put it back in my ‘to be read’ list. I can understand why Bishop Erik Varden has read it so many times.
This book is an excellent read. I am thankful for the work that the CTS does, and for their effort to stay up to date on eBook editions. With my dual form of dyslexia and my son having eye tracking issues I consider them essential, especially with adaptive technology. I am thankful for this volume, and would pick up any future offerings from the pen of Bishop Erik Varden. I do so hope we are blessed with many more volumes in this series. This is a great read, I can easily recommend it! This is an amazing read!
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2026 Catholic Reading Plan! For other reviews of books from the Catholic Truth Society click here.
Books by Erik Varden:
Alight with Hidden Glory
Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses
Entering the Twofold Mystery: On Christian Conversion
Healing Wounds
Redeeming Freedom: The Principle of Servitude in Berulle
The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance
Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness
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