Contemplative Prayer
“ To pray is to become aware of God’s loving gaze upon oneself, to open oneself through faith to His creative, regenerating, divinizing, beatifying action. Then arises in the soul the love of God, charity. ”
Henri Caffarel, Cahiers sur l’oraison, no. 197
Henri Caffarel, Cahiers sur l’oraison, no. 197
“I owe everything in my life to prayer.”
For Father Henri Caffarel, his encounter with Christ was a profound call to a life of prayer. In 1957, he founded a journal entitled Cahiers sur l’oraison(Notebooks on Contemplative Prayer). In 1966, he opened a House of Prayer in Troussures, where he organised weeks of prayer for over twenty-five years. He initiated numerous efforts to promote the practice of contemplative prayer—a subject central to many of his writings. Father Henri Caffarel said of himself, “I owe everything in my life to prayer.” He sought to enable everyone to have a daily encounter with Christ, believing that contemplative prayer is a vital necessity for everyone today.
“I would like you to believe that when you go to pray privately you are expected: expected by the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, expected by the Trinity. “
Teachings on mental prayer
You are expected
We experience a sensation of distress when we arrive in an unknown town—at the port, train station or airport—and no one is there expecting or waiting for us.
What is prayer?
In this fourth Cahier, we felt it necessary to offer you an overview of prayer.
It is no longer I who pray…
“My daily contemplative prayer seems insignificant to me. I cannot imagine that this stammering prayer of a tiny creature could be of interest to the perfect and infinite God.”
