“I have come into the desert to pray, to learn to pray. It has been the Sahara’s great gift to me, and I should like to share it with all my friends. It is immeasurable and contains every other gift within itself. It is the sina qua non of life, the treasure buried in the field, the pearl of great price discovered in the market.

Prayer is the sum of our relationship with God.

We are what we pray.

The degree of our faith is the degree of our prayer. The strength of our hope is the strength of our prayer. The warmth of our charity is the warmth of our prayer. No more nor less.

Our prayer has had a beginning because we had a beginning. But it will have no end. It will accompany us into eternity and will be completed in our contemplation of God, when we join in the harmony of heaven and are ‘filled with the flood of God’s delights.’”

Carlo Carretto, who was a leader of Italian youth movements and Catholic Action before and after the Second World War, followed a call into the desert at the age of forty-four when he joined the Congregation of the Little Brothers of Jesus. This excerpt is taken from his book, Letters From the Desert.