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I saw this very wornout book in my library. No cover, Preface pages disappeared, but the yellowed paper and the 4 threads holding the book had a very antique feel. Books dealers don't even sell books like these: they  look like trash. Bishop Williamson sometimes noticed faithful who had missals that were very old and showing signs of a used condition - and that was a good thing. These books were excellent, and people handled them so often and prayed with them.  These are the best kind...they had Truth and substance.

This translation excerpt is about the need for prayer, from everyone who has a heart and intelligence. As the Priest author suggests:  "Pray!  Pray!  Pray!

At the bottom I added a few lines from Pope Paul III..."Council of Trent".  It almost fits in exactly for today's woes and wars; remarkable. 


Book for Novices, Volume 3
Approval of S.G. Bishop Hasley, Archbishop of Avignon

Avignon, 29 March 1884
† Franc.-Edouard, Arch. d'Avignon

pp 26 – 31

PRECEPT OF PRAYER

  Prayer is not a practice of counseling or overerogation*  recommended to some pious souls; it is an obligatory, indispensable, necessary practice. Every creature that has a heart capable of loving and an intelligence capable of knowing *must raise that heart and intelligence to its creator to worship Him, to thank Him, to love Him, to appease Him, to call Him, to ask Him.
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The NECESSITY OF PRAYER is based, for the nun in particular, on the impossibility of fulfilling her religious obligations.

  I. The nun must love God; now to love God is to give Him her heart by affection because of the beauty and divine mercy,— her intelligence by adoration and respect because of the greatness of God — her will by the fulfillment of God’s commands because of his wisdom — all her senses, her hands to serve Him by serving his children, her feet to go where He wants to send her, her word especially to praise Him, to thank Him, and make Him known; — yet all this cannot be done but through prayer or rather, all this « is prayer ».

    She must fight — and the more the demons are fierce, powerful, cunning, experienced, the more she will need divine help that helps her weakness, her cowardice, her inexperience. — This help she can only have it through prayer.

  She must suffer, suffer in peace, suffer with resignation, suffer with happiness and thanksgiving — but human nature is repugnant for suffering; and to come to  a calm and happy submission she needs a divine help that is granted only to prayer.

  She must obey — and it is not easy, since to obey is to put voluntarily one’s independent nature under the guidance of a person who may be well below us in all respects; — to obey is thus impossible without divine help and this help is granted only to prayer.

  This is what labelled the religious state a “state of prayer,” and the religious  “men of prayer.” Prayer is the life of the religious. The Church has established him to make amends of prayers that men cannot or will not do and has imposed an almost perpetual prayer on him. One would not conceive of a religious who would not pray; and a religious house, in which prayer would not enter as an element of life, wouldn’t have a ‘raison d'être’ . A man of prayer is fit for everything; and therefore, said S. Vincent de Paul, it is important that the missionaries apply themselves with a particular affection for this holy exercise, without which they will bear little or no fruit. With the prayer that is their weapon they will touch hearts and they will convert souls much more than by talent and eloquence.

II. More than any other the nun must especially obey Jesus Christ, the Master to whom she came so freely and so generously to serve Him — and we shall see at the moment how formal is the precept of prayer imposed by Jesus Christ.

  She must also, driven by the affection of her heart, imitate Jesus-Christ the spouse she has chosen to live from his life; now the life of Jesus-Christ is a life of prayer. Surely if anyone should of had to dispense himself of prayer it was indeed He, the God-man; He had no need to pray since He possessed in his adorable person, all the treasures of science, wisdom, power, and yet, after having used the day in the hard works of his ministry, He consecrated the nights to prayer. Fleeing the tumult of the world, he withdrew into solitude or to the top of the mountains in order to pray with more freedom (Luke VI, XXI). And the day before his death, in the midst of cruel anxieties, He began to pray; the sufferings redoubled, He prays again; He prays on the cross, He prays everywhere.

There was without a doubt a thought of atonement but there was also a lesson for us.

III. And besides, is not this thought of atonement in the vocation of the nun? We have told you this when we speak of suffering, but it is prayer that gives to suffering, as to all apostolic works, its divine value. It is prayer that brings suffering to God, which makes it accepted by God and distributes the sanctifying effects to souls. Neither suffering, nor preaching, nor any work can be useful if prayer does not come to give it the divine power to convert and bring back to God.

  Prayer is above all the apostolate ‘par excellence’ of the cloistered nun who can neither preach nor teach; and this apostolate provides for all the others while none else can replace it.

  The apostolate of the word, like that of charity, can be exercised at the same time only with a small number of souls. It is bounded by the limits of time and space; but the apostolate of prayer crosses all limits; its action can be exercised both at the opposite ends of the world; it can extend to the end of time; it reaches wherever divine power reaches. For while the apostolate of the Word is the intermediary through which God distributes his grace to souls, the apostolate of prayer uses God as an all-powerful intermediary to carry out in souls the holy desires that God has inspired him.

  O religious! Pray! Pray! Pray! And it will be you who will give his eloquence to the missionary's word, his strength, his gentleness, his irresistible charm to the sister of charity and to the sister-teacher; it will be you who will stir souls and bring them back God! The most useful being in the world is not he who contributes from his fortune, from his strength, from his talents to the material maintenance of some beings like him, but he who by the zeal of his charity prevents the lightning of engulfing, as were S0d*mb and G0nnorrah, entire cities filled with wickedness, debaucheries, ungodly, sacrileges, whose transgressions these crimes will weary heaven and provoke his vengeance,  ——  he will abate the pestilences, famines and these awful scourges that we have so many times merited, —— the one who will enable an infinity of souls, so distant from God, to escape the eternal damnation, —— the one again who diligently promotes the increase of God on earth, who will save empires and their Caesars, who procure both the prosperity of the times plus the goods of eternity.

  All this is the fruit of prayer because prayer attracts the protection of God and the blessing of God. A well-made prayer is incomparably better, for the good, peace and prosperity of a nation than the most beautiful system on finances and the most brilliant conquest.

    O if you know how to pray, religious, if you know how to adore, thank, atone, ask, what precious good you are for a city and for a state!

  In the life of Sister Marie of Valencia that S. Francis de Sales called a "living relic", it is reported that her prayers converted every day a prodigious number of souls. God sometimes said to her, “In your consideration, my daughter, I will bring out of the way of crime so many sinners in such a city where a retreat is given. – I will put in the way of perfection so many nuns in this monastery...” and in the eyes of all, the preachers and the directors had the glory of these conversions, while they were due to this poor widow who was only praying in her little room.

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“Ask, and you shall receive”. Joa. XVI, 24
“When God commands us, He informs us to do what we can and ask for what we cannot.”
Council of Trent


https://docuмentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1545-1545,_Concilium_Tridentinum,_Canons_And_Decrees,_EN.pdf

"...but of its own great goodness, the providence of Almighty God hath committed unto Us,--already perceiving unto what troubled times, and unto how many embarrassments in almost all our affairs, our pastoral solicitude and watchfulness were called; We would fain indeed have remedied the evils wherewith the Christian commonweal had been long afflicted, and well-nigh overwhelmed; but We too, as men compassed with infirmity, felt our strength unequal to take upon us so heavy a burden. For, whereas We saw that peace was needful to free and preserve the commonweal from the many impending dangers, we found all replete with enmities and dissensions; and, above all, the (two) princes, to whom God has entrusted well-nigh the whole direction of events, at enmity with each other. Whereas We deemed it necessary that there should be one fold and one shepherd, for the Lord's flock in order to maintain the Christian religion in its integrity, and to confirm within us the hope of heavenly things; the unity of the Christian name was rent and well-nigh torn asunder by schisms, dissensions, heresies.

  Whereas We could have wished to see the commonwealth safe and guarded against the arms and insidious designs of the Infidels, yet, through our transgressions and the guilt of us all,--the wrath of God assuredly hanging over our sins,**--Rhodes had been lost; Hungary ravaged; war both by land and sea had been contemplated and planned against Italy, Austria, and Illyria; whilst our impious and ruthless enemy the Turk was never at rest, and looked upon our mutual enmities and dissensions as his fitting opportunity for carrying out his designs with success. Wherefore, having been, as We have said, called upon to guide and govern the bark of Peter, in so great a tempest, and in the midst of so violent an agitation of the waves of heresies, dissensions, and wars; and, not relying sufficiently on our own strength, We, first of all, cast our cares upon the Lord, that He might sustain us, and furnish our soul with firmness and strength, our understanding with prudence and wisdom. Then, recalling to mind that our predecessors, men endowed with admirable wisdom and sanctity, had often, in the extremest perils of the Christian commonweal, had recourse to ecuмenical councils and general assemblies of bishops,..."


The Council of Trent
The Bull of Indiction
The canons and decrees of the sacred and oecuмenical Council of Trent,
Trans. J. Waterworth (London: Dolman, 1848), 1-12.
Scanned by Hanover College students in 1995.

* Fulfilling a charge more than is expected, generous.
** This sentence is also in the Book for Novices.