Dermot Mansfield SJ takes his helping stint at the Church of Our Lady of Grace on Chiswick High Street, London as his jumping off place for thoughts on Mary and prayer.

Sacred Space is a website for prayer begun in 1999 by two Jesuits, Alan McGuckian and Peter Scally. It now averages 20,000 visitors a day. Paul Andrews SJ tells its story.

‘Enter into your heart and you will pray.’ This is the formula Dermot Mansfield SJ gives us to tune into our own hearts where, he says, the Holy Spirit is already praying ‘with sighs too deep for words’.

“Come and have breakfast” are homely words that engage us easily. Brendan Clifford OP uses them to set the scene for this “lectio divina”.

There are probably as many different ways of praying as there are people. Dermot Mansfield SJ adopts the wise Benedictine saying “Pray as you can, not as you can’t” and goes on to suggest a few ways people may find helpful.

Brian writes: Sometimes in my prayers I feel as if I have nothing to say to God. I sit in stony silence for a while, before giving up, or get distracted by what’s going on around me. It’s not that I’m not grateful or sorrowful, but sometimes I run out [...]