Faith and Prayer

Faith and Prayer collects two separate conferences given at Oxford by the esteemed Irish Dominican Vincent McNabb. These pages, as noted in the Preface, show McNabb “in his most natural environment.” Part I addresses such matters as faith in an age of entrenched skepticism, the relationship between faith and authority, and the meaning and measure of life lived in the light of faith. Part II treats the nature and types of prayer, the theology and the psychology of prayer, and the practice of prayer and the avoidance of distraction.

Faith is now no longer, if indeed it ever was, a conviction based on argument, but on obedience, and still more on love for the person of God. –Vincent McNabb, O.P.

Prayer is the voice of desire. –Saint Thomas Aquinas

Delivered early in his career, the conferences of Faith and Prayer represent McNabb’s most erudite and formal preaching, an almost peerless unity of scholarship and spiritual depth. Consistent, however, with his later, more popular preaching, is the book’s central concern: the indomitable desire that all people would enter and enjoy the invigorating, loving presence of God.

Vincent McNabb, O.P., (1868–1943) was an Irish Dominican priest, preacher, and scholar. Highly active in apologetics and catechesis, he authored dozens of books and hundreds of articles, served as professor of philosophy, and filled numerous roles for his Dominican province. Such was the sheer presence of the Dominican friar that G. K. Chesterton once wrote: “Nobody who ever met or saw or heard Father McNabb has ever forgotten him.”

Paperback: 274pp.

ISBN: 978-1952826603