St. Augustine Answers 101 Questions: On Prayer

How can I pray better?
How do I know God hears my prayers?
How can I 'pray always,' as Jesus commands?
Why must I ask for things God already knows I need?

Such were the questions that perplexed a young North African man, Augustine Aurelius (354-430), whose intense yearning for God led him into a profound and lifelong encounter with Christ in prayer.

There Augustine found answers to these questions and to countless more answers not grounded in his own brilliance, but in prayer itself.

In time, Augustine became a bishop and a Father of the Church, and has long been numbered among her saints. Yet of all the Church's saints, not one expresses the longing for God more beautifully, or explores the nature of prayer more helpfully, than St. Augustine. His words speak to us today as freshly as they did to his contemporaries.

St. Augustine wrote many books, but never one devoted to prayer alone. Indeed, his teachings on prayer are scattered in many places. So from over 200 works, Fr. Cliff Ermatinger has gathered and translated Augustine's teachings on prayer, and now presents them here in a simple question-and-answer format. What emerges is nothing less than a rich new "catechism on prayer" by one of the Church's greatest saints.

St. Augustine (354-430) was Bishop of Hippo from 396 until his death. His greatest works include his autobiographical Confessions and The City of God, on Christianity in history.

Fr. Cliff Ermatinger has worked as a spiritual director, retreat master, and lecturer on spirituality for many years. He is associate pastor of two parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago.