Preface.

core of all prayers. And because I was prompted / for the sake of a certain person to do something of the kind / I attempted it / according to the ability / that God granted. And these were the thoughts / that I had in the process. I saw / that amidst the almost infinite multitude of our prayer-books / for the most part, people have the habit / of using a manner of speaking that is quite rich, verbose, and thoroughly complex, and also sometimes quite heavy in its phrasing. For example: To wrestle with death This refers to the "death-struggle" or agony, a central focus of 17th-century "Ars Moriendi" (the art of dying) literature. / that is without doubt a labor / so bitter / that it can disturb all our thoughts. And our Savior himself / when he wrestled with death / although he otherwise was accustomed to pray quite at length / used very few words on the Mount of Olives A reference to the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26), where Jesus repeated the same prayer three times. / and only ever repeated the very same words. I have, however, occasionally come across prayers / above which the title stood: Prayer of a person who is wrestling with death. And