Difficulties in Mental Prayer: A New Edition of a Classic Guide to Meditation

This new edition of a timeless masterpiece on prayer features a

This clear and cogent approach to prayer remains as fresh today as it was almost seventy years ago at its original publication. Dom M. Eugene Boylan, who worked on the splitting of the atom in Vienna, left a promising scientific career to become a Trappist monk. Published in 1943, Difficulties in Mental Prayer soon became an international bestseller with editions published in many European languages and even in Chinese.

Drawing on personal experience and from the teaching of the mystics, Boylan systematically considers the difficulties that arise at each level of prayer and offers practical advice for overcoming them. Boylan does not present a scientific classification of the types and methods of prayer, but rather a guidebook to enable anyone to navigate the personal challenges that come with a pursuit of growth in prayer.

Boylan's approach is unique because he always has in mind those readers who either find it difficult to meditate or seem to have lost the capacity to do so. According to journal Catholic World, Boylan's masterwork "will simplify a subject often unnecessarily complicated."

"The outstanding content of this book is so theologically solid and practically helpful that contemporary readers will find much in it to help them to discover for themselves creative solutions to their own particular difficulties in mental prayer, and much more besides!" —Michael Casey, O.C.S.O., Author of Toward God: The Ancient Wisdom of Western Prayer