Abstract
Wicks notes at the outset that this is not a book to be read straight through so much as a collection of writings—some more scholarly, some pastoral, and some personal or experiential. It is a practical ministerial resource to be savored over time, especially, I would add, for those preparing for, or engaged in, the ministry of spiritual direction. The forty-five chapters that make up this volume are arranged in nine parts. The four chapters on praying with the gospels and the chapter on praying with Job are especially fine. These chapters could be the basis of a course on biblical prayer; they would enrich any retreat and they would be a valuable aid in programs aimed at the ongoing spiritual formation of Catholic adults. A great deal of the book considers prayer as an activity (method and practice), though in some places its attention focuses on prayer as an expression of the relation between human beings and the divine mystery (the theological underpinning of prayer). The chapters on Catholic Spiritual Traditions, though a bit uneven, are informative and, taken together, thought-provoking. While there are different stresses within the prayer traditions of, say, Carmelites, Franciscans, and Benedictines as a result of the different charisms of their founders and the apostolates they undertook, I found myself wondering about their respective experiences of God. Does the pluralism of spiritualities reflect a pluralism within Christian religious experience? I suspect it does.
Each tradition’s charism may be distinctive, yet every human being’s relation with God is unique. The chapters on Prayer and Marriage (coming from rich pastoral experience) and Military Postures in Prayer (with its dramatic images), in particular, seem to confirm the point about a pluralism of religious experience. The notion of one God is a religious abstraction; the experience of God is concrete and diverse, which means that whatever the method we start with, each of us eventually prays in his or her own way—a point to which the book is keenly sensitive. Speaking about prayer, however, requires that we also think about the Christian experience of God, about which the book is less explicit.
Although a number of chapters consider prayer and suffering (Praying with Job, Praying in the Darkness, Losing Thomas … Finding God), perhaps a chapter on praying with victims would have been both helpful and timely. Solidarity with victims affects everything from the way we worship (liturgical prayer) and how we read and appropriate Scripture, to the way we pray the rosary, say Grace before meals, and interact with the world around us. It shapes the prayer that our lives become. A contemporary spiritual guide for this kind of praying might be Pope Francis himself, to whom the book is dedicated.