Book Review: In Constant Prayer

 

With prayer as a high priority, I am always interested to read books focusing on prayer.  So, I was delighted to recently request to read the book, In Constant Prayer, by Robert Benson.

Unfortunately, this book was not what I expected.

With the title, In Constant Prayer, I was expecting the book to focus on how to continually incorporate prayer into daily life, based on scripture.  Instead, the main focus was on reading “the daily office” and other specific prayers, as well as highlighting Catholic prayer values.  Scripture is hinted, but not cited or fully referenced.  Instead saints are quoted throughout the book.  This particular book doesn’t encourage prayer life, instead this book hinders it.

After reading the first few pages and realizing the subject matter was questionable, I continued to read this book solely from a journalist perspective. Based on this book, I won’t continue reading books in The Ancient Practice Series.

Even though there are personal anecdotes from the author’s life and the book is mostly well-written from an English standpoint, I’m unable to recommend this book, due to the questionable content.  The concept of constant prayer is important, but it's simply not properly expressed in this book.


Note: I received this book from Book Sneeze, which is a program designed for bloggers to write book reviews in exchange for books, yet the opinions expressed in this review are my own.