Some practical tips for starting a prayer school

Da Paolo Tessione - July 25, 2019

to start a school of prayer:

• Anyone wishing to found a small school of prayer must first of all commit to becoming a man or woman of prayer. Teaching to pray is not giving notions about prayer, books are enough to do this. There are many. Teaching to pray is another thing, it is to transmit a life. Only those who pray with passion and constancy make it.

• It is important to suggest to young people simple and practical rules and ask them to experiment with them. If you don't make them pray - very and constantly - you are wasting time, you will not teach to pray.

• It is important to start in a group, not very numerous, because the path of prayer is tired. If you walk in a rope, when one gives up the other pulls, and the march does not stop. The strength of one remedies the weakness of the other and resists.

• It is important that the group set specific goals: a quarter of an hour of individual daily prayer, then half an hour, then even an hour. The precise goals taken together make progress and serve everyone, the strong and the weak.

• Group verification (or life review) is needed on the way forward. Share the difficulties and find solutions together. It is useful in these periodic checks (every two, three weeks) to try not to deal with anything other than prayer.

• It is important to give space to questions about prayer. It is not enough to instruct how to pray, young people must be able to present their difficulties and that the person in charge tries to give an answer to their obstacles. If there is this, there is truly a school of prayer, because there is exchange and there is concreteness.

• Prayer is a gift of the Spirit: whoever starts a school of prayer must take charge of the young one by one and on each one must implore with great constancy the light of the Holy Spirit.

Source: The Way of Prayer - P. De Foucauld Missionary Center - Cuneo 1982