-- How to Pray the Christian Way
David Torkington has written a few books about contemplative prayer, describing this very deep prayer; this is his culminating effort. This deepest interaction with God is not something we make happen. These books, in describing that, speak of silence and persistence and trust in God as key, and underlying all these, His love. That is something He makes available to us, for us to become more holy, more like God. We need to grow in love, a love that is a total self-giving, but a key to our love attaining that growth is to let His love pervade us, so we can become more like Him.
This book is set as a series of talks by a man speaking of God’s never-ending love, and how we might better partake of it through contemplative prayer. “Meditating on Christ as He once was, we can come to contemplate Him as He is now, and through Him to contemplate the Father.” Mystical love is “putting self second and someone else first, whether you feel like it or not.” But, “Mystical contemplation is a pure gift of God, and to suggest that it can be attained by man-made methods and techniques is heretical.”
In another place he wrote “Read, re-read and reflect all Jesus said and did in St. John’s account of the Last Supper, and these profound truths will come alive in a way that nothing I can say ever will.” The apostles lived with Jesus for 3 years; John lived with Mary for 20 years before he wrote his gospel. Perhaps her influence is why his Gospel is sometimes called The Gospel of Love.
If you want to grow closer to Jesus and better understand contemplative prayer, this book may open new doors for you.
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