Summary of “Prepare Your Heart to Pray” by Dom Augustin Guillerand

This summary is taken from a section of Dom Augustin Guillerand’s book, “The Prayer of the Presence of God,” found online @ https://catholicexchange.com/can-prepare-heart-pray

Dom Augustin Guillerand (1877-1945) was a French Carthusian monk who entered La Valsainte monastery in Switzerland in 1916. During the tumults of the 20th Century, Dom Augustin would become famous for his calm and peaceful demeanor and his spiritual teachings. While many of his writings have been lost, Catholic Exchange publishes some of them online.

“The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of (1) turning to God and (2) away from all that is not God.“

This advice is really the same advice that Jesus gave us on the Sermon on the Mount: “When you pray… (1) go into your room… and pray to your Father… and (2) shut the door” (Mt 6:6).

(1) “turning to God”

“Since the Fall, God is in us, but we are not!” Prayer is a way to turn back to God, to “raise up” our minds and hearts to Him who is in us.

“A soul prays only when it is turned toward God, and for so long as it remains so.”

(2) “away from all that is not God.”

Everything we do in life that raises us beyond and above created things, both in preparing for set times of prayer and in life in general, is essential for prayer: “all this is prayer and prepares us for a still more intimate prayer.”