Prayer can be difficult to write about, because trying to explain it is something like trying to pin down a butterfly. The more you seek to capture it, the more it wants to escape. In the end, what happens in prayer is incommunicable because it happens privately, between one person and God. Even the greatest and most articulate saints have struggled to communicate not only how they pray but also what happens when they do. Often they resort to metaphors that even they admit fail.
Then again, prayer is beyond no person. Everyone can pray. God desires to enter into relationship with each of us, and one need not be a cloistered mystic to enjoy the fruits of prayer.
—Excerpted from Praying with America, Introduction by James Martin, SJ
