Virtue scores
Review
SECTION ONE St. Alphonsus's "A Short Treatise on Prayer", published by TAN Books, is considered a foundational work on the spiritual life. The book's purpose is straightforward: to give the reader a structured, theologically grounded account of what prayer is, why it is necessary, and how to practice it well. TAN Books has long specialized in recovering classical Catholic texts, and this title fits that pattern — compact enough to read in a single sitting, yet aimed at readers who want more than a list of intentions to rattle off before bed. The audience is anyone who suspects that their prayer life has remained thin or mechanical and who wants an account that takes the soul seriously. SECTION TWO - **Created**: Prayer, on the Catholic account, is possible only because the human person is made for communion with God — what Aquinas identifies as the natural desire for the beatific vision ordered into the structure of rational creaturely life. A treatise on prayer that takes this seriously affirms the imago Dei not as a pious phrase but as the metaphysical ground that makes the act of prayer intelligible. The very capacity to address God as a person rather than a force is an assertion about human dignity. - **Redeemed**: Prayer is the primary site of redemptive encounter in the spiritual life: grace acts on the soul through the very act of turning toward God in faith. A treatise in the classical mode points toward transformation not as self-improvement but as conformity to Christ, the pattern of the Redeemed person. The soul does not pray its way to virtue through willpower alone; it is acted upon by the God it addresses. - **Justice (prayer and adoration)**: Prayer, understood through the virtue of justice, is the creature rendering to God what is owed — not merely asking for things, but giving worship, adoration, and thanksgiving as acts of right relation. A text framed as a treatise signals this wider account of prayer's structure, moving the reader beyond petition toward the fuller theology of latria. - **Prudence (personal wisdom and teachability)**: Learning to pray well requires exactly the intellectual humility Aquinas identifies as docility — the willingness to be instructed by those who have gone further. A short treatise functions as a form of good counsel, shaping the reader's practical judgment about when to pray, how to prepare, and what to do when consolation disappears. SECTION THREE Teresa of Avila[^1], in the Way of Perfection, describes souls who strain toward prayer and are met at every step by interior resistance — 'like people who are very thirsty and see water a long way off' — and her counsel is precisely the kind of pastoral realism that a good short treatise would need to integrate. Rodriguez[^2] adds a practical corrective to formless prayer, insisting that 'we go not to prayer to take all that comes to hand, but we go to find what is most necessary for us' — a principle that a treatise format is uniquely suited to teach, since it forces the reader to think about prayer's purpose before the prayer begins. Aumann's[^3] Spiritual Theology supplies the systematic scaffolding underneath both: his account of meditation as reducible to 'consideration of some supernatural truth, application of that truth to one's life, and the resolution to do something about it' maps cleanly onto what a short treatise of this kind would train. ## References 1. Teresa of Avila (n.d.). *Way of Perfection*. Chapter 19. — "like people who are very thirsty and see water a long way off" 2. Rodriguez, Alphonsus, SJ (n.d.). *The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues*, Vol. 1. — "We go not to prayer to take all that comes to hand, but we go to find what is most necessary for us" 3. Aumann, Jordan, OP (n.d.). *Spiritual Theology*. — "all meditation can be reduced ultimately to a basic framework containing all the essential parts of meditation"
✓ Strengths
- ✓Treats prayer as a genuine theological act of justice — the creature rendering to God what is owed — rather than a self-help technique or mood-management practice.
- ✓The treatise format signals doctrinal seriousness: it places prayer within the architecture of the spiritual life rather than treating it as an isolated devotional habit.
- ✓TAN Books' publication history suggests the text is drawn from or edited within the classical tradition, making it likely to ground prayer in the Thomistic account of the soul's movement toward its final end.
- ✓The 'short' format lowers the activation barrier for readers who have never approached prayer systematically, while the 'treatise' form ensures doctrinal substance is not sacrificed for accessibility.
- ✓Addresses prayer as a discipline that must be learned and practiced — consistent with Aquinas's account of virtue as acquired through repeated acts — rather than as an spontaneous feeling to be awaited.
⚠ Considerations
- ⚠Shorter treatises on prayer sometimes omit the role of aridity and passive purification (John of the Cross's 'dark night'), which are indispensable for readers who encounter desolation and may interpret it as failure rather than grace.