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INTRODUCTION
W
hen the time you have put aside for prayer has come to an end, what then? We all know that prayer should never finish. “Always be joyful, pray constantly,” wrote St Paul to the Thessalonians (1 Th 5:17). Jesus told us that prayer should never cease (Lk 18:1). This has often been misinterpreted as the requirement to practise the mental repetition of devotional utterances such as verses from the Bible. Yet, how is it possible to do this? Can a surgeon focus on prayer while maintaining total concentration as he carries out a complicated operation? What about a student who has to prepare a dissertation, perform experiments in a lab or learn a new language? Surely the supermarket cashier dealing with customers all day at the checkout cannot be thinking of anything else. Wouldn’t these people be in danger of performing their work negligently if they were constantly preoccupied with repeating words of prayer? That is not the way Jesus behaved nor does he ask us to do two things at the same time. True understanding of constant prayer comes only when we grasp what prayer actually is. If we regard prayer as a conversation with God, the danger is that we will concentrate on using words. We will end up talking all the time! If, as the saints did,
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