The Saints

Each one learned to pray, and left us a way in. Choose a guide.

Ignatius of Loyola

Jesuit · 1491–1556

A Basque soldier turned mystic who taught us to meet Christ with our imagination — to step inside the Gospel and be there.

Jesus of Nazareth

The Gospel · 1st century

When the disciples asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray,” he gave them the Our Father. His own name became a prayer the whole Church has prayed ever since.

Teresa of Ávila

Carmelite · 1515–1582

She turned prayer into friendship — 'an intimate sharing between friends' — and drew the soul inward to the One who already dwells at its center.

Francis of Assisi

Franciscan · 1181/82–1226

He called the sun his brother and the moon his sister, and praised God through every creature in his Canticle of the Sun.

The Curé of Ars

Eucharistic adoration · 1786–1859

A peasant of his parish prayed before the tabernacle simply: 'I look at him, and he looks at me.' This is contemplation — a gaze of love.

Augustine of Hippo

Church Fathers · 354–430

He chased happiness through every pleasure and idea before finding it within. “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Julian of Norwich

English mystics · 1342–after 1416

An anchoress who, amid plague and fear, received words of unshakeable hope: “All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Thérèse of Lisieux

Carmelite · 1873–1897

A young Carmelite who found a way to holiness for the small and the weak: little things done with great love, and a child's total trust.

Jan van Ruusbroec

Flemish mysticism · 1293–1381

A Brabant priest who withdrew to the Groenendaal forest and mapped the soul's ascent into loving rest in God — and back out again into 'the common life' of love.

John of the Cross

Carmelite · 1542–1591

Poet-mystic and co-reformer with Teresa, who charted the road to God through letting go of everything — 'nada' — into a dark, loving faith, and out into the living flame of union.

Catherine of Siena

Dominican · 1347–1380

A laywoman whose love of God drove her from hidden prayer into the public square — and who taught the secret of an 'interior cell' you can carry anywhere.

Hildegard of Bingen

Benedictine · 1098–1179

Abbess, visionary, healer and composer who heard God in the 'greenness' of all living things — viriditas — and sang it back in soaring chant.

Benedict & Lectio Divina

Benedictine · monastic · 6th–12th century

From St Benedict's Rule to Guigo's 'ladder of monks' comes lectio divina — reading Scripture slowly, in four movements, until the Word moves from the page to the heart.

Anthony & the Desert

Desert fathers · 3rd–4th century

From the Egyptian desert, where seekers fled to silence and asked, 'Abba, give me a word' — one short saying, lived and chewed over, to change a life.

Bernard of Clairvaux

Cistercian · 1090–1153

The 'mellifluous doctor', who loved the Holy Name of Jesus as honey, medicine, and music — and taught the soul that its whole purpose is to love God.

Thomas à Kempis

Augustinian · Devotio Moderna · 1380–1471

Author of 'The Imitation of Christ' — the most-read Christian book after the Bible — and teacher of a plain, humble, interior way of prayer.

Charles de Foucauld

Hidden life of Nazareth · 1858–1916

A soldier turned desert hermit who gave God everything in silence and presence. His Prayer of Abandonment is a complete, trusting surrender into the Father's hands.

The Cloud of Unknowing

English mystics · 14th century

An unknown master who taught that God is reached not by thinking but by loving — sending one little word, like a dart of longing, through the cloud that hides him.

Brother Lawrence

Carmelite · 1614–1691

A lay brother who, over thirty years among the pots and dishes, learned to walk with God unbroken — no method, only a constant, affectionate turning to the One already present.

Francis de Sales

Salesian · 1567–1622

A gentle bishop who insisted devotion is for everyone, not just monks — and taught ordinary people to pray with the imagination and to carry a 'spiritual nosegay' through the day.

Bonaventure

Franciscan · 1221–1274

The 'Seraphic Doctor', who imagined the whole life of Christ as a living tree heavy with fruit — each scene a fruit to taste by being vividly, lovingly present to it.

Dionysius the Areopagite

Apophatic theology · c. 5th–6th century

The mysterious author of the apophatic way: to reach God by unknowing — letting go of every image and thought, and rising into the 'brilliant darkness' beyond the mind.

Evagrius Ponticus

Desert fathers · 345–399

A brilliant desert monk who mapped the inner life and taught that prayer begins with the gift of tears, and rises toward pure, imageless communion with God.

Walter Hilton

English mystics · c. 1340–1396

An English contemplative who taught a prayer beyond words — a single naked longing for Jesus that burns like fire through every distraction.