He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

by Walter J. Ciszek

If we could constantly live in the realization that we are sons of a heavenly Father, that we are always in his sight and play in his creation, then all our thoughts and our every action would be a prayer. For we would be constantly turning to him, aware of him, questioning him, thanking him, asking for his help, or begging his pardon when we have fallen. And every true prayer begins precisely here: placing oneself in the presence of God. It is a phrase all spiritual writers use, it is a concept each may visualize in his own way, but the realization of it in practice is sometimes most difficult to achieve. Words do not make a prayer, even the words of the Our Father taught us by our Lord himself, or the words of any other familiar prayer made easy by constant repetition. There is no formula that works of itself, no magic charm that must automatically be heard by God and produce its effect. Prayer, true prayer, is a communication—and it occurs only when two people, two minds, are truly present to each other in some way. So in prayer we must do more than merely visualize God as present as some sort of father figure. His fictionalized presence will not do; his imaginative presence will not do. By faith we know that God is present everywhere and is always present to us if we but turn to him. So it is we who must put ourselves in God’s presence, we who must turn to him in faith, we who must leap beyond an image to the belief—indeed the realization—that we are in the presence of...