The Common Sense Book of Catholic Prayer and Meditation

It’s a common but unrecognized problem: without even realizing it, you may have allowed your spiritual life to be distracted and diverted by practices and assumptions which are in fact foreign to authentic faith. That’s why you need Hilda Graef’s Commonsense Book of Catholic Prayer and Meditation! In it, she gives you positive ways to avoid pitfalls and build your spiritual life on the solid rock of truth.

It’s deceptively easy (especially for committed Catholics) to fall into these spiritual traps. You may become frustrated and let your efforts to follow Christ fall by the wayside because you think that your prayers and devotions should make you feel a certain way, and they don’t. Or you may take something as an answer to prayer simply because it came to you after your prayer, even though it brings trouble and difficulty into your life. Graef also details here how quickly you can succumb to sinful habits of injustice, pride, lack of charity, and many others — without even recognizing it’s happening.

Graef, an internationally respected Catholic author, here gives you the spiritual resources you need to clear away these and other roadblocks to your spiritual progress. She shows you how to use common sense in your approach to faith — while remaining loyal to the Church’s teaching in its fullness.

This book doesn’t just show you how to avoid spiritual traps! It also sketches out a comprehensive program for your ongoing spiritual development. Graef details how you can grow closer to God by being faithful to your everyday duties; how you can make your work a means to holiness (even if you hate your job); how you can grow holier even through recreation; how to center your spiritual life on the Mass; and much more. She even gives you valuable secrets of how you can jump-start your prayer time when you find your prayers stale and dispiriting.

Beware: The Commonsense Book of Catholic Prayer and Meditation compels you to examine yourself and your spiritual habits and assumptions honestly. This is no book for the worldly or halfhearted! But if you’re willing to take a hard look at your spiritual life and do what’s necessary to become more faithful to Christ, you’ll find a tremendous amount of help here.

Hilda Graef (1907-1970) was a German of Jewish and Protestant ancestry. By God’s grace, she found her way into the Catholic Church after years of atheism. During World War II she escaped from Hitler’s thugs and lived a precarious existence in a London attic that she described as "frequently shaken by bombs." From this attic, Graef wrote many books, including The Way of the Mystics and a biography of St. Edith Stein. Hilda Graef had a keen ability to find God — and to lead others to find Him — not only in advanced states of prayer and profound doctrines, but also in the ordinary things of everyday life.