Watch and Pray: Christian Teachings on the Practice of Prayer

As Bishop Seraphim Sigrist says in his heartfelt introduction, Watch and Pray is “a landmark anthology of Christian reflection on prayer, past and present,” as described by Christians of every persuasion over the last two thousand years.

In this companion volume to Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the Interior Life Lorraine Kisly sounds the great themes of Christian prayer—praise, supplication, thanksgiving, willingness, repentance, and purification. She raises the difficulties we all experience—self-will, fear, blindness, ignorance—and their remedies.

The sequenced passages reflect on one another and gradually reveal a community intimately united in powerful and sanctifying experience. A collection of great depth, richness, and variety, Watch and Pray again and again opens out to include us in this great current of Christian prayer. From Abraham of Nathpar in the sixth century to the wonderful contemporary Cistercian André Louf, from poet William Butler Yeats to Patrick, saint of Ireland—each of the men and women, mystics and monks, Presbyterians and Dominicans, Syrians and Swiss calls us to the path of prayer meant for every Christian.

“If this book is read truly,” Bishop Seraphim concludes, “the reader will surely find the beginning of prayer itself, and this is to open another book with no end at all.”

Lorraine Kisly has studied and worked with the texts of the great religious traditions for more than twenty years. She was the editor of Parabola: Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning; the founding publisher of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and editor of Tricycle Books; and publisher of Pilgrim Press. Her earlier collection, Ordinary Graces: Christian Teachings on the Interior Life, was published in 2000. She lives in rural Pennsylvania.