DOM JOHN CHAPMAN, who was the Abbot of Downside 75 years ago, is famous for advising people to “pray as you can and not as you can’t”.

He was speaking about personal prayer and discouraging the notion that there is some ideal style of praying to which everyone should aspire. Each one of us needs to discover the method which suits us best.

Even so, how can we begin?Some conditions are generally agreed to be indispensable, especially time, silence and solitude. Praying cannot be confined to snatched moments; it needs our proper attention. It should not be competing with hubbub; there is a need for stillness. And it is difficult to imagine how we are to pray when absorbed in other activities among large numbers of people.

At once we recognise the problem. The theory may look straightforward, but many will argue that in practice there is a major obstacle. Our actual lives are just too busy, too noisy and too crowded.

That obstacle has to be taken seriously, but should not be left entirely unchallenged. Some people will say they have no time. And there are, of course, those who work very long hours indeed under intense pressure. Nevertheless, they will usually manage to take time out several times a week, perhaps jogging, perhaps in a gym, perhaps pursuing a hobby, perhaps just reading something completely different. When we want to, we can normally find time to break the routine. Finding time, if necessary, is the least of our problems.

Finding silence and solitude may be a good deal harder. But silence and solitude do not have to be physical and external. They can also be simply a matter of disposition. Some people can be silent and alone in a crowd.

I heard recently of a woman who used to pray going to work on the Paris Métro. One day a man asked her, “Madame, what are you doing?” She replied that she was not doing anything, just sitting there. “No,” he said. “I’ve been watching you. And your expression is very calm, very serene. What are you doing?” The conversation continued and eventually she told him. Then he said to her, “Madame, thank you. I was coming in to Paris today to do something very foolish and very wrong. Now I will not do it. I shall return home.” And he thanked her once more, said goodbye and left.

Silence and solitude may be found within. It is not easy, but it may be so.

These conditions set the scene for prayer and are not as formidable as they may seem at first. Certainly they cannot simply be enlisted as excuses for not praying at all. A more difficult problem lies elsewhere, for these conditions suit more readily those who tend to be introverts. People who recharge their batteries by being more reflective will find space and time for themselves and develop strategies for silence and solitude even amid noise and crowds, like the woman on the Paris Métro.

But what about those people who are extroverts, for whom silence and spending time alone do not come naturally? On the contrary, they find energy in activity, from noise and the buzz of the crowd. “Pray as you can and not as you can’t,” was John Chapman’s advice, but how does it work for them? How do extroverts pray?

It is important not to confuse the conditions for praying with actual praying. Valuable as they are, there is more to praying than spending time on our own in silence. After all, we may just be daydreaming. Rather, the heart of praying is the desire to pray, the longing to come close to God. That is the fundamental disposition which is truly indispensable: we have to cultivate a deep-rooted desire for intimacy with God. It makes God present.

It is a way of loving. We do not even need to be conscious of that presence all the time, for, as lovers know, even unawares the presence of the Beloved shapes everything we do.

Such praying, forged in desire, is independent of temperament, whether introvert or extrovert. It is as real in a crowd as in silent solitude.

Monsignor Roderick Strange is the Rector of the Pontifical Beda College, Rome.