DIFFICULTIES IN
MENTAL PRAYER

BY

FR.

M.

EUGENE BOYLAN

Monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St. Joseph, Roscrea.

Ski

EIGHTH IMPRESSION
THIRTIETH THOUSAND

THE NEWMAN PRESS
WESTMINSTER, MD.

1948

First Published, July, 1943.
Second Impression, November, 1943
Second Edition, March, 1944.
Fourth Impression, August, 1944
Fifth Impressson, March. 1945.
Sixth Impression, September, 1945.
Seventh Impression, October, 1946
Fighlh Impression, October. 1948

Cum Permissu Superiorum

Biljll »b»t«t;
PATRICIUS DARGAN.
Censor Thee!, Peput,

Jmjnimt potest;
* IOANNES CAROLUS,
Arehiep, Duh!ire».,
Hibernia Primos.

Dublin!, die xy* Februarii, anno 1944.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

MADE IN IRELAND

BY

M. »1. GILL AND SON, LTD., DUBLIN.

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CONTENTS
PAGE

π.

Preface................................................................................. ix
i. Introduction......................
The Powers of the Soul.......................................... 6

ni.

Discursive Prayer

iv.
v.

Modifying the Method............................................... 13
Sources of Difficulty in Prayer . . . . 18

vi.

Towards Affective Prayer........................................ 24

vu.

Affective Prayer............................................................ 30
Further Developments.............................................. 3j

vin.
ix.
x.

xi.

xii.
xiii.
xiv.

....................................................... 9

Goodness of Life
..................................................... 40
Prayer and the Spiritual Life
.... 46

The Path of Progress............................................ s2
The Difficulties of Not Praying .... 58
The Prayer of the Priest ......
The Indwelling Spirit of Adoption ...

63

7°

xvi.

Our Identification With Jesus
....
The Growth of Jesus Within Us ....

xvii.

Emmanuel—“ God With Us ”.................................9°

xviii.

Assets and Liabilities.....................................................9S
The Prayer of Faith................................................ 101
“Many are Called ...”....................................I09
Conclusion................................................................... 116

xv.

xix.
xx.

xxi.

77

84

Appendices...................................................................... l25

PREFACE

1 here is a process used for printing pictures in colour which
involves the making of separate blocks for each elementary
component colour in the picture. The prints from each of
these blocks are superimposed on each other, and if the
relative strength of each colour is correct, the result is quite
natural. If, however, any one shade is too weak, then there
is a corresponding defect in final rendering of the true colour,
which might perhaps be corrected by an extra printing of
the weak component.
Now, the purpose of these pages is something like that of
the extra printing. It is not that the standard presentation of
mental prayer is defective, but it would seem that the impres­
sion of mental prayer that many souls have received needs
to be strengthened in certain “ colours.” That purpose
explains the irregular extent of treatment wliich the reader
will notice in these pages. The subject of methodical
meditation is only outlined, as there are more than enough
excellent books dealing with it in great detail. Besides, the
souls for whom this book is primarily intended are those who
cannot succeed with the usual methods of meditation, as well
as those who once were able to meditate but now find that
it has become an impossibility to do so.
In order to fit this “ extra printing ” into the general
picture of prayer, the whole subject is, at least, outlined;
certain phases which seem to need more detailed treatment
being dealt with more extensively. But there is another
lx

X

PREFACE

reason why we have insisted on including a discussion of such
states of prayer as those which we have called the prayer of
faith, and why we beg the reader, whatever may be his
position on the ladder of prayer, to read the whole work.
Whatever may be said about the general law of the develop­
ment of prayer when observed and averaged among a large
number of different souls, most individuals find that their
path of advance is extremely twisted and shows rapid and
extensive variations. It would seem therefore that, except
perhaps at the very beginning, an acquaintance with the
nature and technique of all the different stages of prayer, is
not only helpful at any stage, but even necessary at all of them.
Despite the title of this work, it is not a scientific analysis
or a classified catalogue of the various difficulties that may
arise in prayer, with a complete practical solution of each
one appended in its proper place. Its purpose is rather to
discuss the nature and ways of prayer, not with scientific
objectivity, but from the point of view of the individual,
looking at it as it appears to him. In this way it is hoped to
put the soul in position to deal with most of his own difficulties.
Further, the primary purpose is not so much to instruct the
reader as to encourage him to press on in prayer, and to
induce him to seek further information from the works of
more competent pens. That is why the treatment of the
subject is so condensed ; so much so, that it will need a
second reading to extract all we have tried to say. This
re-reading is all the more advisable from the fact that the
earlier chapters will be more easily understood in light of
those which follow.
As the point is so well treated in many other works, it is
assumed that the reader is aware of the necessity of mental
prayer. A Christian who does not pray is like a man who

PREFACE

xi

neither thinks nor wills—a mere animal in the spiritual life.
The pursuit of perfection is utterly impossible without mental
prayer—which, of course, may be made quite unconsciously.
In fact, it may be said that if a man does not pray he cannot
save his soul.
We must insist that we cannot regard the “ active ” life in the
religious state or in the priesthood as one which precludes the
soul from advancing—and advancing far—in the ways of prayer.
On the contrary, the religious state, if it be truly such, should
both lead a soul to progress in prayer, and be a continual
help to him to do so. The essential and primary purpose of
the religious life is the perfection of each individual
religious; otherwise it has no right to the name. Now, the
pursuit of perfection is exactly what is needed to make
progress in prayer possible, while, in its turn, prayer is the
very best means of seeking perfection, and all the more so
when it is “ progressive.”
The same reasoning is valid with regard to priests living in
the world. Although their obligations in the matter of
perfection are somewhat different, and despite the fact that
the difficulties they have to face are quite considerable,
nevertheless all that we say of prayer even in connection
with religious, applies with no less force to their case. Even
though we personally have less direct knowledge of their
problems, a chapter on the prayer of priests has been inserted
lest clerical readers should imagine that their hopes of progress
in prayer were considered to be any less than those of religious.
Nor do we think that even lay-people by their life arc
debarred from hoping for such progress in prayer as we
indicate in this book. Anyone who is prepared to serve God
with good-will, and devote sufficient time daily to spiritual
reading and to prayer, may reasonably expect to grow in

xii

PREFACE

friendship with God, which is, to progress in prayer. The
difficulties of the laity in the interior life need more detailed
treatment than can be given in this book, but they are not
insuperable, and need not prevent any lay person of goodwill
from trying to lead an interior life of prayer even in the world.
Further, we are quite definitely opposed to the theory that
there is no state of prayer between ordinary methodical
meditation and passive contemplation. As we hope will
become evident from these pages, prayer seems to us to be
the result of a progressive intimacy and friendship with God.
If prayer cannot progress, then neither can friendship.
This point is of great practical importance, for false
notions in its regard may turn a soul away from all hope of
achieving union with God. In course of what follows, we
will try to show how this union can be sought for and found,
by an ever-increasing intimacy with Jesus in prayer and in
work. This leads to a view of each exercise of the religious
life as a meeting-place where the religious is sure not only
to find Jesus, but to be able to be united to Him. Now this
view is the best remedy for what is perhaps the state of
greatest misery on earth—the misery of half-hearted service
in religion, for it puts the otherwise weary and monotonous
routine of the religious life in an entirely new and
captivating light, offering new strength and new purpose to
many souls.
It will be further found that the division of prayer into
well-marked and clear-cut stages has been, to a considerable
extent, avoided. Definitions, too, when given at all, are often
loose and sometimes vague. This, however, is quite
deliberate. There is no use in trying to be more definite or
more clearly classified in our notions than is the reality of
prayer itself. Now, prayer, especially from the individual’s

PREFACE

xiii

point of view, can often be very indefinite and quite unclassifiable. Further, even if there does exist a well-marked
ladder of prayer for each individual, it is by no means
necessary, at least as a general rule, to know on which rung
one is standing. The important thing is to avoid standing
still, and to keep on climbing.
The fact that the same difficulty often re-occurs at different
stages in the progress of prayer, and that the same principle
finds many applications in the course of the spiritual life, has
led to a number of repetitions in the text. In a book written
to meet the needs of individual souls, and which views its
subject from different points of view and attempts to deal
with the many misunderstandings and wrong notions that can
be met with, such repetition seems justified and will, we
trust, be pardoned.
No apology is made for making what can only be an
imperfect attempt at the difficult task of outlining the teaching
of St. Paul on the indwelling of the Divine Persons in the
baptised soul and the soul’s incorporation in Christ. This
doctrine was the foundation of all the Apostle’s teaching.
It still is an unrivalled foundation for a life of prayer, and
would appear to be not only the best encouragement for it,
but also the surest ground for hope of its achievement. In
particular, St. Paul himself testifies that the Holy Ghost helps
the infirmity of our prayer, and many theologians see a close
connection between the operation of the gifts of the Holy
Ghost and the development of prayer.
That the pursuit of prayer involves the pursuit of holiness
need cause no one any doubt as to the possibility of its
achievement. When Our Saviour rose from the dead, He
had taken on Himself, and triumphed over, every possible
obstacle, in our past, in our future, in ourselves, or in our

xiv

PREFACE

surroundings, which might interfere with our holiness. The
agony that broke His Sacred Heart in the garden was the
thought that, after He had done and suffered so much—far
more than was ever necessary—for our holiness, we should
render His Blood useless by our cowardice and by our failure
to believe in Him and to trust in Him. The greatest value
that we can set on Christ’s sufferings is to believe that they
can make holy even such as we arc. We must, in fact, fill
up the things that are wanting in the Resurrection of Christ
in His Body—in ourselves—by letting Him rise in us through
our holiness.
If there be any grace, any good, any help in these pages,
it is due to the intercession of Mary the Mother of Christ,—
it is due to the grace of the Holy Spirit, who works in the
most unworthy priest,—it is due to the sufferings of Jesus
Christ, who merited all graces for men,—it is due to the
mercy of the Father in heaven, who wills to restore all things
in Christ, in whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit is all
His glory. To Their Name be all honour and glory for ever.
September 8th, 1942.
Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady,
The Abbey of Mount St. Joseph,
Roscrca
•

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

ACED with the ever-increasing difficulty of leading a holy­
life in contact with a world ever growing more flagrantly
pagan, often urged by the more or less conscious feeling
of the needs of one of the most critical moments in the
history of Christianity, many souls have commenced to
examine the state of their spiritual health and to seek means
of spiritual advancement. The need for greater spiritual
energy has led them to consider especially their prayer, for
they have come to realise that prayer is the source of their
spiritual strength and the centre of their spiritual life.
The result of this investigation is, in many cases,
unsatisfactory and disheartening. Many find that there is
something wrong with their prayer; they note a lack of
progress, an ever-increasing difficulty, and even a growing
distaste for that exercise. Some conclude that for them it is
a mere waste of time to go on “ pray ing " as they have been
doing; others find the time given to prayer a burden that is
becoming well-nigh intolerable. It is with the hope of doing
something to ease such difficulties that these pages have been
written. While the needs of those in religion are their
principal aim, there is no reason why lay people in thé world
should not find help in the discussion. Even beginners may
take courage if the possibilities of prayer are set before them,
and once their misapprehensions of the true nature of prayer
are corrected, they will attempt its regular practice with
renewed determination. But it is only after some continuous
attempt at regular prayer has been made that these lines
fully find their intended application.
I

F

i

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

An exact catalogue of difficulties in prayer with a definite
remedy for each is not intended ; rather, it is hoped that by
discussing the nature and practice of prayer, and pointing out
the sources from which difficulties arise, the reader will be
enabled, perhaps after some experimenting, to find a solution
for his problems. Since many of the difficulties arise from
mistaken notions of its nature, let us first survey briefly the
development of prayer so as to fix our perspective and then
return to a more detailed discussion of its various elements
and stages.
Ο
φ
Technically speaking, prayer is an elevation of the mind
and heart to God, to adore Him, to praise Him, to thank
Him for His benefits, and to beg His grace and mercy. In a
more restricted sense, the word is confined to the prayer of
petition, that is, to the asking of seemly things from God.
Chief among its effects are to make us love God more and
more, to conform our wills to His, to make us truly humble,
and to lead us to become more intimately united to Him.
It can rightly be described as a loving conversation with God,
especially if it be remembered that conversation includes
listening as well as talking, and that great friends can often
converse without words. When we make use of a set formula
with our lips and endeavour to conform our thoughts and
desires in some way to our words, we have what is usually
called vocal prayer. But, of course, if it is to be a prayer at
all, the mind must play some part in it. In what is called
mental prayer, we endeavour to originate these thoughts and
desires in ourselves by some reflection, and then to give
utterance to them by words—generally words of our own—
or even by that eloquent silence where the heart speaks to
God and gives Him fitting praise without the noise of words.
But even if we do articulate words, or vocalise these acts and
desires, our prayer does not therefore cease to be mental
prayer. This is a mistake that some people make, thinking
that they must repress all articulate utterance or speech in

/
INTRODUCTION

3

mental prayer. On the contrary, if, as often is the case, lip
articulation helps to make our acts more fervent or more
real, it can be used. But it is not essential. In this, as in all
such matters, a holy liberty of spirit should prevail.
The “ acts ” which we make in prayer are called affections.
The ordinary meaning of this word in English is entirely
different from its connotation here. Affections in prayer are
essentially acts of the will, by which it moves towards God,
and elicits other acts of the different virtues, such as faith,
hope, love, sorrow, humility, gratitude, or praise. In the
earlier stages of the spiritual life these affections usually
cannot be produced without laborious consideration and
tedious effort. The things of this life, the rush of human
activity, the daily experience of the senses, so throng the
imagination and excite the emotions that the more abstract
truths of faith and the mysteries of the nineteen-centurydistant life of Our Lord have little hold on the mind. Some
of the time of prayer must, therefore, be spent in reviewing
these thoughts and stirring up the heart to act and to give
expression to its desires. The word meditation, in its strict
sense, denotes this preparatory work of reflection and
consideration. This is not really prayer; it is merely a
prelude to prayer. The affections and petitions form the real
prayer. For this reason the custom which applies the name
Meditation to the whole exercise of mental prayer is
unfortunate. While reserving the point for a fuller discussion
in a later chapter, let it be said here that the word Meditation
in its wider sense, as applied to the whole exercise of prayer,
covers far more than the strict meaning of the word. It must
include some petitions or acts if it is to be prayer at all.
As one advances in the spiritual life, convictions are
developed which are easily re-animated at the time of prayer;
reading and reflection—two essential foods of the spiritual
life—deepen the knowledge of Our Lord and His teaching,
and make us grow in His love; the reality of the thinas of

4

DIFFICULTIES IN ΜΕΝΤΛΙ PRAYER

the spirit becomes intensified. The result is that the time
necessary for preliminary consideration becomes less and less,
and the affections come more easily, and gradually take up
the major part of the time of prayer. Such prayer is called
“ affective prayer.” Then, just as when friendship has
developed between two men, mutual understanding and
community of purpose ripen, and words begin to carry a
whole wealth of meaning,—so, too, as intimacy with God
increases and virtue advances accordingly, we may find that
our affections—that is, our acts of the -will and of the other
virtues—need fewer and fewer words for their expression,
and it may sometimes happen that we are content to kneel
in silent adoration, or in mute sorrow, or in some such
“ affection ” without using words. Thus our prayer simplifies
itself. This simplified prayer is often called the “ prayer of
simplicity,” but even when authors agree as to the definition
of the term, it would seem that they frequently apply it to
quite different things, and so, to prevent misunderstanding,
it seems preferable here to avoid the use of the expression.
The prayer just referred to may be called the prayer of
simplified affections.
In all this, of course, God’s grace has been at work.
Sometimes, however, in the case of a soul who is generous
and humble, and who refuses to compromise and sign a
treaty of peace with self-love—no matter what occasional
victories that enemy may have won—, it happens that God
begins to play a still greater part in the soul’s prayer. His
action is of a new type which may at first escape notice.
He works in the depths of the soul and makes little or no
appeal to the imagination or to the emotions, or even to the
ordinary working of the intellect. This state of prayer, which
here will be called a prayer of faith,—without, however,
insisting too much on the exactness of the term—is a prayer
of great value and most effective in uniting the soul to God.
It has its own difficulties and perplexities, and may demand

I
INTRODUCTION

S

the exercise of much patience and resolute effort. If, however,
it is persevered in with generosity and confidence in God,
it leads to great graces of prayer and holiness. It would be
no exaggeration to call it a short cut to sanctity.
Before leaving this chapter to consider in more detail the
different phases of prayer just outlined, anticipating a future
discfussion of the subject, it may be said that while writers
divide the spiritual life into stages corresponding to the
different degrees of prayer which are characteristically found
in souls in each stage, yet there is no sharp border-line
marking the divisions, nor indeed is there any strict
uniformity of type within any one degree. Sometimes, for
example, especially upon occasions of great joy or sorrow,
even the beginner may find himself praying in a very
simplified way; while, on the other hand, the advanced soul
may often have to fall back on the technique of meditation
to surmount some temporary disability. In all these matters
there is much misunderstanding, and as many of the difficulties
in mental prayer spring from these wrong notions, the next
few chapters will, first of all, give a short account of the
different faculties which the soul uses in its operations, and
then discuss in more detail the various phases of prayer here
outlined.

Chapter II

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL
ECHNICALLY speaking, man is a rational animal. With
the brute animals'he shares the power of sensation and
sense appetite, while in common with the angels, he
has an intellect and a will. In the state of grace, he is made a
participator in the Divine nature and is enriched with the
power to know and love God by faith, hope and charity.
All his natural knowledge depends on the working of his
five external senses. He has, however, internal senses, two
of which, the imagination and the memory, concern us here.
By means of thdSe powers he can recall and reproduce the
images obtained from the outer senses, by a sort of a talking
picture, as it were. He can even reconstruct new pictures—
or phantasms, aS they are called,—out of the material supplied
by former experience. In addition to these powers of sense­
knowledge, there is also the very important faculty of sense
desire, called the sense appetite, which desires any good or
attractive object which the senses set before the subject,
cither in reality or in imagination. This faculty is automatic;
that is, it acts immediately on the presentation of the object
to it, and its action is often accompanied by what the
philosophers call a passion, which produces some corporal
effect. We can see this appetite—the word has a much wider
application here than in ordinary speech, for it covers all
movements towards the good of any sense—at work in our
moments of anger, or, for example, in the desire for
forbidden foods on days of abstinence. In passing, it may be
noted, that since this desire is automatic and, therefore,
outside the control of the will, it can never be a sin in itself.
If this were clearly understood, much trouble about supposed
consent to bad thoughts ami to anger, and the like, would
be avoided. There is a desire there, but only in the sense
6

T

THE POWERS OF THE SOUL

7

appetite; there can be no sin until the intellect recognises
the sinful nature of the object, and the will desires it. Thus,
on Friday morning, no matter how much such a man’s
“ appetite ” desires meat, as long as his will refuses to yield,
not only does he not sin, but he can even merit considerably.
This digression, introduced because of its importance in
another connection, brings to our notice the higher faculties
of the intellect and the will. The intellect is the faculty by
which man knows truth; its scope is indicated by its power
of knowing abstract truths, relations, universal ideas, etc.
In this life—in its natural mode of operation at any rate—it
works by abstracting its knowledge from the concrete
individual objects depicted in the imagination. But even after
the intellect has obtained matter for thought, the imagination
still keeps trying to form some image to represent the ideas
with which the intellect is working. That is why abstract
thought is so fatiguing, for the imagination can never fully
achieve its purpose; it must often be content with
picturing a word, or some vague image, to suit the idea.
Its efforts can be illustrated by trying to sec what “ picture ’’
we form of God. Its limitations can be illustrated if we try
to picture the notion of “ dependence ” or of “ causality ”
or of “ honesty,” or of any such abstract idea.
The will is the intellectual appetite ; that power by which
we desire or “ love ” objects which the intellect pronounces
good. Everything can.be regarded as good in some respect ;
even sin is willed as good—a good of the senses, for example.
Merit belongs ultimately only to acts of the will, and it is
through the will alone that sin can be committed. On the
working of the will the whole of the spiritual life depends.
The will is a free faculty, whose action is subject to ourselves
in such a way that no created object can force it to act.
Because of this dual nature in man, there are a number of
reactions to which he is subject, and which we shall loosely
call emotions or passions. These are rooted in his sensitive,

8

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

or animal, nature. The joy, with its corporal expression,
which a boy finds in getting first in an examination is
probably more rational than sensitive in its origin; the eager­
ness with which the same boy retaliates when attacked comes
more from his sensitive nature than from the action ol the
intellect. To this latter type of reaction belong many of
those “ feelings ” which are found at prayer: consolations,
aridities, sorrow, joy, etc. That is why the subject has been
introduced here, for it is obvious that, in so Jar as they come
from the senses, such movements are in themselves not
meritorious, nor are they even signs of true devotion, which
consists in the readiness of the will to serve God. They are,
however, of tremendous help in overcoming the resistance
of the “ flesh ” to serving the spirit, and assist us to devote
all our energies to the service of God. In practice, no human
being could serve God with his whole heart, unless his
sensitive nature found some delight to draw it to God; for
we are men, not angels. But there is a tremendous difference
between the “ feelings " that have their origin in the higher
powers, and which overflow into the senses, as sometimes
happens, especially in the higher Hights of the spiritual life,
and the “ feelings ” that have their origin in the senses, and
which tend for their own sake to draw the higher powers
down after them. Much of the “ devotion ” experienced in
the earlier part of the spiritual life has a good measure of
this latter “ feeling " in it. God forbid, however, that we
should despise it, for often such consolation may come from
God. It is a great help to detach our hearts from the
consolations of creatures, and to move the whole heart in
its search for God. But to imagine that real devotion consists
in such feelings is a fatal error.
There are other points of importance in this connection,
but since the above is sufficient for our immediate purpose,
they can be left for later treatment, and we may go on to
consider the first stages in prayer.

Chapter III

DISCURSIVE PRAYER
Y discursive prayer is meant a prayer in which reflection
or consideration of some mystery or of some truth of
faith predominates. “ Discourse ” was the old word
used for the process of reasoning by which one came to the
truth gradually,—step by step, as in one of Euclid’s
demonstrations. The opposite action of the intellect might
be called “ intuition,” where the mind takes in a truth at a
glance, either because it is self-evident—■“ the whole is greater
than its part,” for example—,or, in a less strict sense, because
long experience has made one so familiar with all the steps
of the argument leading up to it. All, for example, see the
axioms in Euclid by intuition, while many of the propositions
are so familiar to the teacher that he may now be said to see
them by intuition. The term “ discursive prayer ” is here
introduced for a deliberate reason. In the strict meaning of
the word, “ meditation ” applies to the discourse of the mind
with the accompanying workings of the imagination and the
memory, and to that alone. Since, however, in many
religious houses, the name meditation is given to the exercise
in which a stated time' of the day’s programme is set apart
for mental prayer, the word is often applied to any form of
mental prayer. Even if a religious is raised to the heights of
contemplation, be is said to be “ at his meditation.” This
usage has its disadvantages; it takes away a very useful word,
which will here be replaced by “ reflection ” or “ considera­
tion,” and it leads those who take the name too strictly to
9

B

IO

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

think that the èssence of this exercise of mental prayer lies
in the considerations.
Now in reality the fact is that there is no real prayer
until the soul starts making “ acts,” or affections. This
cannot be too often emphasized. The purpose of con­
sideration, reflection or “ meditation ’’ in its strict sense, is
merely to lead the soul to produce acts. It has other effects
to be considered later, but once the acts come, its work is
done, and it should be put aside until the soul can no longer
go on making acts—or, in other words, can no longer go on
talking to God in some way or other, for that it is in which
prayer really consists. If such conversation with God is
found possible at the very beginning of the time of prayer,
no attempt should be made at considerations as long as our
conversation with God continues, even though this may mean
leaving considerations out altogether. (Such, at least, is our
opinion, but not all would exactly agree with it. On this
point, and on the matter of this chapter and the next, see
Appendix I.)
Since however this is not usually the case, at least in the
beginning, some method of reflection will be of tremendous
help. The literature on this subject is enormous, and most
people are acquainted with the common teaching to some
extent at least. Numerous authors have drawn up and
expounded and developed in more or less detail a “ method,”
which in the main essentials is generally closely related to
that used by St. Ignatius in his celebrated Spiritual Exercises.
The subject of the meditation is prepared the evening before,
divided into “ points,” and the main conclusions, acts,
petitions and resolutions to be arrived at, are determined.
When the time of prayer has come, the exercise is commenced
by putting oneself in the presence of God; there are certain
preludes to fix the faculties by a “ composition of place,”
etc., certain preliminary petitions ; the first point is taken,
and the imagination and intellect applied to it in methodical

DISCURSIVE PRAYER

11

fashion; certain acts are elicited ; then the second point,
and perhaps a third, are dealt with in similar fashion. The
predetermined acts, petitions and resolutions, together with
any others that suggest themselves during the exercise, having
been made, the prayer concludes with a “ colloquy ” or
conversation with God or with some of his saints, and a
short thanksgiving, to which is added an examination of the
manner in which the exercise has been performed. Some
thought may be selected to be kept at hand during the day,
to renew the effects of the meditation in the soul. The whole
scheme is familiar to anyone who has used one of these
Manuals of Prayer, which in some cases prescribe the
programme in great detail, and there is no need here to treat
of it at any greater length.
When a method of this sort is followed, it certainly leads
to success, and it forms a most useful way of helping the
beginner in his first attempts at mental prayer. The many
souls who can follow it are in no need of our remedies, but
it is desirable to warn them to be ready to modify their
method should it cease to be helpful, and to put them on
their guard against the mistake that may be made through a
wrong notion of the essential nature of prayer, of thinking
that reflection is prayer, and of failing therefore to give
enough time to the making of acts and talking to God.
They may perhaps find new hope in the suggestion that
there may be further possibilities open to them. There are
many souls who have reached a-high degree of holiness, and
who never seem to have used or needed any other way of
praying. We say “seem,” because, as .will appear later on,
it may be, that while “ meditating ” with the lower part of
their mind, they arc, all unknown to themselves, con­
templating God in a special, way with its highest powers.
The same thing may be true even of vocal prayer, especially
of the choral recitation of the Divine Office. In any case,
there are many paths to holiness, and while the graces of

I2

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

advanced prayer are a powerful, if not the greatest, help
to progress, they do not in themselves constitute holiness.
If a man love God with his whole heart and with his whole
soul, and with all his mind and with all his strength, he has
fulfilled all the law, and he is perfect, no matter in what way
he prays.
There seems, however, to be a number of people who,
despite continued efforts and undoubted goodwill, not only
fail to find any help in the use of these methods of prayer,
but are even hindered thereby, sometimes to such an extent
that the whole business of prayer becomes an intolerable
burden. As a result, that which should be the source of
their spiritual life becomes dried up ; perseverance becomes
difficult, and advance is only achieved by heroic efforts. The
soul may even give up all attempt at prayer, and end in
spiritual disaster. Then there are those who were once
successful in prayer, but who found as time went on that
they could no longer pray as they used to do, and were
reduced to a state of complete powerlessness at meditation,
not knowing any oilier way to pray. All such souls, it is
hoped, may find the beginning of the solution of their problems
in the following discussion of mental prayer. Lay folk need
not be deterred by the fact that at times it is clearly the
case of priests and religious that is being considered. Most
of the points to be raised, and all the principles indicated,
can apply to those in the world who want to lead a life of
prayer and to sanctify their day’s work.

Chapter IV

MODIFYING THE METHOD
HE detailed methods of discursive prayer, found in so
many manuals, and which are a difficulty to the class
of souls we are now considering, are of comparatively
recent growth ; their spread dates from about the sixteenth
century. In the old days, when the religious life was more
monastic in form, and faith perhaps more lively, the need
for such a detailed plan was not so generally felt. The notion
also of mental prayer as something confined to a special short
period was quite foreign to the minds of the time. To what
extent private prayer was made in common by the old monks
is not quite certain ; such an exercise would be rather a
means of stirring up the fires of prayer, so that they might
bum steadily for the rest of the day, for the whole day was
looked on as a time of prayer.
The work of meditation, in the sense of reflection and
consideration, was supplied by spiritual reading—which was
done slowly and thoughtfully—and was continued by actual
reflection and by pondering over the truths of faith or the
mysteries of Christ during the time of manual labour or the
free periods of the day. Acts of ejaculatory prayer throughout
the day helped to turn the heart continually to God, and the
Divine Office gave utterance in a definite and inspired form
to the feelings and the needs, not only of the individual soul,
but also of the whole Church, the Body of Christ. Thus,
when a religious betook himself to private prayer, the
preparatory work was already done, and he went straight to
the actual business of praying.
In course of time, the development of the religious state

T

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i4

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

brought many distracting activities into the lives of its
members, and in most cases made the public recitation of
the Divine Office impracticable. It was then found desirable
to make a regular practice of marking oil' a set time for
mental prayer, and to make this one of the principal exercises
of the day, not in order to limit its practice, but to ensure
at least a minimum of attempt. This development was
probably hastened by the results of the Renaissance, which
saw the decline of the medieval spirit of faith that had
permeated even the lives of the laity. Nowadays all religious
houses, even those of the monastic orders, have a time set
apart for mental prayer, while the Canon Law urges a similar
practice for the secular clergy. To sum up the effect of this
change, one might say that the whole of the monk’s day had
been compressed into an hour or so, and fitted into the life
of the modern priest or religious, in order to make sure
that, for some part of the day at any rate, he should rise above
his cares and pre-occupations, and talk with God.
Since the object of this change is not to limit prayer but
merely to insist on a minimum of it at least, it follows
therefore that if, for a particular place, or for a particular
person, this process of compression can be reversed and some
of the old spirit partly restored so that one’s prayer overflows
into the other hours of the day, it will be most desirable
that one should do so. For this purpose, spiritual reading,
which is of so much importance in the spiritual life, could
become more or less of a meditation. Spiritual reading and
mental prayer are as necessary for the life of the soul as the
daily food is for that of the body. Without constant spiritual
reading, not only can there be no progress in prayer, but
there is not even any hope of perseverance in the spiritual life.
To try to lay down a minimum time for this exercise would
be too delicate a matter. The grace of God can always adapt
itself to circumstances, and the circumstances of each religious
bouse are a very special part of His plan. Where there is

MODIFYING THE METHOD

sufficient time at an individual’s disposal, it may, however,
be said that, to reduce the time for spiritual reading, without
due cause, to less than three hours in the week, is to starve
the soul, and will bring about the consequences of such
starvation. And it would seem that, for at least half of this
time, the reading should be done personally. A total diet of
public reading can hardly be sufficient to meet the needs of
each individual.
In some religious houses, owing to special circumstances, it
may not always be possible to spend half an hour daily, even
in broken periods, at this exercise. Where that is the case,
one should be careful to seize such opportunities as may occur
on Sundays or holidays, or during the vacation time, to nourish
the soul by suitable reading. In those houses where books are
read for the community, each individual should supplement
the general fare by reading in private such matter as suits his
own special needs. Everyone should keep himself familiar
with both the deeds and the words of Our Saviour, for they
are the revelation of the Word of God. The building up of
a vivid living memory of Our Lord by frequent reading is of
great importance. Further, one should make oneself
acquainted with the general scheme of the spiritual life, and
in particular with the doctrine of prayer , even in its higher
stages. This equipment is necessary in order to co-operate
with the changing phases of God’s action ; it will also help
one to make the best use of any available direction.
Once this spiritual knowledge has been acquired, further
reading should be done without haste, digesting and savouring
what has been read, and occasionally making such acts of
prayer as suggest themselves. Reading, which should never be
commenced without a short but fervent prayer for help, should
always be regarded in a spirit of faith as containing a message
from God Himself, somewhere in the lines read or between
them, which prayer, faith and confidence will make per­
ceptible. This spiritual reading is the foundation—one might

16

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

say, the essential foundation—of a life of prayer, and it is the
best preparation for that exercise. If it is carried out faithfully,
the need for long and methodic consideration at the time
of prayer will be rapidly reduced ; in fact, this may even
become quite impossible.
Consequently, the ordinary
methods of mental prayer must then be mollified to suit the
needs of such a soul. As further progress is made in the
knowledge, and more especially in the practice of the
spiritual life, not merely will the considerations be lessened,
but the acts or affections will become much simpler. In fact,
one particular act will gradually come to include many of
the others usually prescribed in the method ; moreover,
the nature of the acts may so change that it is difficult to
observe them, for there are many movements of a loving
heart that escape human observation. Who can count the
“ acts ” of love that a mother makes beside her sleeping child?
The method of prayer will thus need further modification,
and indeed at this stage, methods may be put aside.
Since the purpose of consideration prescribed in the
methods of mental prayer is principally to lead to acts or
affections, such consideration may and indeed should cease as
soon as the acts come. When that stage is reached where one
can “ pray ”—that is, make acts—from the very beginning of
the prayer, these considerations, apart from a few moment’s
recollection at the beginning to fix one’s attention, may be
left out of the prayer altogether. Of course, if the facility
to pray ceases, one may have to fall back on consideration to
make a fresh start. But one must be on guard against the
mistake of thinking that considerations are an essential part
of mental prayer. There is, however, another valuable fruit
that comes from considerations : those strong convictions
about the principles of the spiritual life, the reality of the
supernatural, etc., which are developed and deepened by
frequent reflection. Care must be taken to sustain these
convictions when reflection is no longer used at the time of

MODIFYING THE METHOD

>7

prayer. That can be done by spiritual reading, especially
when made in a meditative way, or by frequent, almost
unconscious, reflection during the various parts of the day.
One can easily realise how a business man or a professional
man is always thinking of his affairs, continually “ meditating ”
on them, and seeking improvements, and devising new ways
of advance. If a soul is taking its spiritual life seriously, it
will be assiduous in its consideration of ways and means, in
its search for truth, and in its endeavour to follow the truth
when known. Thus, without deliberate determination, it
will give quite a lot of thought to its spiritual life during odd
moments of the day. Meditation in this sense should never
be given up ; for if a man thinks not in his heart, his whole
spiritual life may soon be laid desolate.
The resolutions, too, which are generally indicated in the
method, must not be overlooked. It may happen that they
are not made during mental prayer. Then they should be
made or renewed during the examination of conscience; they
will probably become much simpler and more general as
time goes on. But as long as there are particular failings to
be overcome, especially if they are habitual, there is need of
particular resolutions to combat them. Given, then, that the
soul finds that it can pray without having to reflect at length
on various points, and that it provides for reflection and for
the renewing of its resolutions during some other part of the
day, there is no reason why methodical meditation should
not be omitted in favour of a freer and fuller talk with God,
at least as long as such a state of affairs continues. For, when
all is said and done, meditation is only “ thinking about God,”
while prayer is “ talking to God,” a conversation which may
develop into “ looking at God and loving Him.”

Chapter V

SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY IN

PRAYER

OT only is it unnecessary for a soul who has macle some
progress in the spiritual life and who supplies the
matter and the convictions that lead to mental prayer
by reflective spiritual reading, to make a point-by-point
meditation when he comes to the time of prayer, but it
would also be beset with difficulties. This is especially true
when one is ready for the next type of prayer, in which
reflection is reduced to a minimum and acts or affections
predominate, where the whole prayer, in fact, is a loving
colloquy or conversation with God. To indict the use of a
“ method ” on such a one is to try and force a sprinter to
use crutches. No wonder a soul so circumstanced finds
meditation an intolerable burden! But, before considering
this next type of prayer, let us first see whether there may
not be other reasons why the use of a prescribed method
may be troublesome and may form an obstacle to success, even
though the individual is not yet at the stage’ of proficiency in
the spiritual life but is still quite a newcomer.
It would seem that many authors, in considering the
ascent of the ladder of the spiritual life, begin with the
condition of an habitual sinner, in svhom the teachings of
the faith have been more or less neglected, and a great
measure of free rein given to self-love and to the desires of
lower nature. The question may be asked whether such a
scheme, with the consequent prescriptions of matter and
method for prayer, may be applied to the type of soul that is
met with, say, in Irish seminaries and novitiates. Most of
the clerical students and of the young men and women who
18

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SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY IN PRAYER

«9

enter religion here, or who start seriously to take up the
practice of the spiritual life in the world, have already
imbibed the convictions of the faith in their very infancy,
one might say, and have lived, at least in their earlier days,
in the atmosphere of the faith. It is true that they may
have been thoughtless and never have considered the real
meaning of their religion, but at least they have had sufficient
conviction to lead them to enter the seminary or the religious
state, and that frequently, just after their school-days.
Generally, too, habitual sin of any serious type is rare among
such subjects, and there are many who still preserve their
baptismal innocence. Surely such a soul does not need, nor
can it face, the long, tedious plodding' of a course of “ prelude
and point ” meditation for many years. It is true that it will
have to be educated in the spiritual life, and that the new
knowledge will have to be digested by reflection. But this
is often done quite spontaneously in spiritual reading, and
hardly needs such a detailed plan of attack as is called for in
the case of one who is trying to effect his conversion from a
life of sin. To make such souls “ meditate ” without some
modifications in the method is often to set them building a
house already completed.
Proper spiritual reading will produce the necessary con­
viction with regard to the new truths that they learn, if
indeed the docility of their faith and the readiness of their
fervour do not do so spontaneously. The earnest resolutions
that are one of the fruits of meditation will generally arise
spontaneously in affective prayer; if not, then the examina­
tion of conscience will supply them. Therefore, it would
seem that such souls are often really ripe for some sort of
affective prayer, even though afterwards it may be necessary
for them to make use of meditation for some time. Their
direction calls for prudence, but to insist that all should
adopt methodical meditation seems a mistake. It would be
far more profitable to put them in touch with the person of
2

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

Our Lord, anti let them become intimate with Him in loving
conversation. Such intercourse with Our Lord is an excellent
corrective for their defective habits, and will quickly mould
them according to His heart.
There is another reason that makes this policy desirable.
The demands made on the time of the modern priest and
religious by his work and the preparation for it, leave a
minimum for the more interior exercises of the spiritual life
and for the development of a life of prayer. If such a one
does not get into touch with Our Lord before the full
burden of intense activity is laid upon him, it is not then
so easy for him to develop a type of prayer than can easily
be fitted into his day’s work ; whereas, if he has previously
had some practice of affective prayer, he can soon acquire
the habit of talking to Jesus during his work. Even if
after some time it becomes necessary for him to return
to meditative prayer during the time set apart for that
exercise, so that he may complete his spiritual formation,
nevertheless he has acquired a habit of ejaculatory prayer that
is of inestimable value, and has made the first step on the
way to the transformation of all his activities into true prayer.
There is another type of temperament that finds great
difficulty in discursive meditation. Some minds reach their
•conclusions by a sort of intuition rather than by a long
discourse of reasoning. When a subject is set before them,
they quickly draw out of it all the fruit available at the
moment, and the harvest will not be increased by prolonged
consideration. It is not till later on, in the light of new
knowledge and experience, that their convictions are
deepened and extended. Such souls have little to gain
by trying to keep the mind fixed for long on the points
of a meditation. It is better for them to proceed to
the acts, and try to talk to Our Lord, or, if that fails, to
repeat phrases of some· favourite prayer, slowly and
thoughtfully. This difficulty can easily arise when, as in some

SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY IN PRAYER

21

religious communities, the subject and the points for
meditation are read the evening before and again in the
morning during the time of prayer. At the first hearing the
mind may often there and then extract as much as it can
from the subject-matter, and is ready to proceed to pray
immediately. The repeated reading in the morning is then
wearisome enough, without having to go through the matter
point by point. In such cases one should try to speak to Our
Lord, or else fall back upon a new subject. It is well always
to have some pre-determined alternative. The fifteen
mysteries of the Rosary form a programme of prayer for many
souls. Others make a similar use of the Stations of the Cross.
Another way is to remember that Mass :s beginning somewhere
at every moment. If one follows that Mass in thought and
imagination, it can provide suitable matter for prayer.
Another source of difficulty in mental prayer lies in the
choice of a subject. In this matter the needs and attractions
of each individual must be considered. Where the choice is
left to oneself, the ordinary rules of prudence—especially if
advice is sought from some competent authority—will settle
the matter. But what of the case where the subject is read
for a community the evening before, and repeated point by
point next morning?' This is a delicate question, and calls
for some compromise. There are two extremes to be
avoided. First of all, every religious, whatever be the needs
of his soul or whatever be his progress in the ways of prayer,
should ever be on his guard against despising or disdaining
in any way any such spiritual food coming from authoritative
sources. The provisions made by superiors are a very special
part of God’s Providence, and are filled with grace. Anyone
who listens to such reading in a spirit of faith, saying in his
heart, “ Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth,” will find that
God makes special use of it to illumine and strengthen his
soul. It may be only one small point—a single word, perhaps,
that He uses—but it will fit into another context, that of God’s

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

other dealings with that soul, and will be a source of grace.
It will be done unto us as we have believed. It is a matter
of great importance that souls, especially advanced souls,
should be very careful of their attitude in such circumstances.
On the other hand, it seems unreasonable to demand that
every soul should make its prayer on the lines of the
meditation read for the community, and to deny individuals
the right to follow the attractions of grace. Avoiding these
two extremes, every soul of goodwill, while preserving its
liberty of spirit, should give preference in such a case to the
matter so provided by those charged with its government.
If this can be made use of for prayer, even if only as a startingpoint for a colloquy with Our Lord, that should be done.
If, however, it does not fit in with the soul’s needs and with
the workings of Divine grace, it may be quietly and respectfully
laid aside. It often happens that among the points read out
there is a Divine reminder for the soul of the need to renew
its familiarity with some special truth or the like, by reflection
or by reading at some other time, without its being necessary
for the soul to abandon its own way of prayer at the moment.
In all this matter there is clearly need for discrimination and
prudence, and it would be well if those who find it necessary
to develop their prayer along individual lines should
occasionally take counsel with some competent adviser, be
he superior, priest, or even a prudent colleague.
Under present conditions it often happens that for many
souls a suitable guide is not always at hand; but between
annual retreats and the various journeys that holidays and
ill-health demand, it will generally be possible to consult
some “ specialist ” and establish relations with him. Once a
competent guide has been found, to whom one can easily
open one’s mind, and who has been made acquainted with
one’s circumstances, an occasional letter will be enough to
provide for all the normal uncertainties of the spiritual
course. In this matter, too, God will always adapt Elis grace

SOURCES OF DIFFICULTY IN PRAYER

23

to circumstances, so that where no such guidance can be
found, He will make other arrangements. But where
competent advice is easily obtainable, it would be folly to
reject it.
In the case under consideration, to charge with singularity
or with pride everyone who does not follow the subject read
out or who feels the need of a book to fix his thoughts,
especially in a community which includes members of all
ages and of various degrees of religious experience, seems
rather arbitrary. It is impossible to expect that in such a com­
munity the same spiritual food should be suitable to each
one’s needs. Of course, the caprices of every individual
cannot and should not be humoured. But there is need for
prudent discernment and a holy liberty of spirit. However,
where custom has already established a canon in these matters,
religious should be prepared to accept the limitations arising
either out of circumstances—such as the lack of a light—or
through the direct decree of superiors. The grace of God
can always adapt itself to such providential circumstances,
and confident resignation to God’s fatherly care will always
ensure His special help. We may be quite certain that those
who resign themselves in this and in other similar matters
cheerfully and confidently, will progress far more quickly,
and with greater solidity, than if they tried to insist on getting
their own way. Be it noted that God often gives during the
day, even in our most active moments, the graces that He
withheld during the time of prayer. In fact, for a soul who
takes care to accept and to adapt himself to all the workings
of God’s providence, especially when He seems to set
obstacles in its path, His ways, however unreasonable they
may seem at first, are in fact full of a must wonderful
tenderness and merciful bounty.

CHAPTER VI

TOWARDS AFFECTIVE PRAYER
O far we have been considering difficulties that arise at
prayer, through the use of a method which is unsuited
to one’s state or temperament. The general test of
suitability in this connection is twofold : facility in the
exercise and soundness in the result. Of the two, tbe second
is the more reliable, and is sometimes the only sign of a
proper way of praying ; for if a soul is praying in the way
best suited to his state, it will be manifested in the goodness
and fervour of his life. One who tries to adopt a manner of
praying beyond his spiritual strength or age will soon find
himself involved in difficulties, and will begin to fail in
regularity and to fall away from his former fervour. But if,
for example, a soul finds that he can spend the time of
prayer in loving intercourse with God, even though he uses
few words, and if, at the same time, he does not begin to
fall off in fervour in the other actions of his spiritual life,
nor to develop that touchiness of pride that refuses to accept
even the smallest humiliation or neglect, then he may and,
indeed, should be -allowed to pray in this way. This is
affective prayer, which will be treated in a later chapter.
But what of the soul who is not yet ready for such prayer,
and who, despite goodwill and earnest efforts, can find no
help in the ordinary method of meditation ? Here, since
individual needs differ, it must suffice to make suggestions
which may indicate a line of approach that will lead to the
solution of this sort of difficulty.
Nowadays, thank God, daily Communion is a regular
practice, not only in religious houses, but with many souls

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TOWARDS AFFECTIVE PRAYER

25

outside the religious state. While there are a number who
use a book to make their thanksgiving, there are a great
many souls who are able to persevere in prayer for the usual
fifteen minutes without any such help. Indeed, many more
would do so if they had not a wrong idea of the way in which
Our Lord wishes to be entertained, for they think that we
must use the formal terms of a prayer book instead of speaking
to Him in our own incoherent words. This thanksgiving
would seem to offer a way of approach to mental prayer,
for, be it well understood, unless it consisted in the mere
formal recitation of a long list of vocal prayers by heart, it
must have been true mental prayer. Suppose, then, we begin
our prayer with a spiritual communion—quite an informal
one—not worrying much how we must word the invitation
to Jesus to come into our hearts (for “ fine speeches ” should
be avoided like a plague in private prayer), but paying a
whole lot of attention to Him Whose presence is the cause
of our prayer, for He is already in our souls from the time of
our baptism as long as we are in the state of grace. Then
we can proceed just as wc do after Sacramental Communion.
Most souls have worked out some programme for this time
to suit their own needs.
The four ends for which Mass is offered, for example,
might supply four he dings for prayer, which could be
developed in familiar conversation with Our Lord. These
are: to adore God, to praise Him and thank Him for all
His gifts, to atone for our sins, and to beg His grace and
mercy. This colloquy or conversation with Our Lord could
be modified to bring in the point or points which are the
subject of our prayer. Very often the points of a meditation
just read for us can be so used. Thus, for example, if the
hidden life of Our Lord be the subject, we can talk to Our
Lord about His days in Nazareth, familiarly, intimately, as a
man is wont to speak to his friend. We can ask Our Lord
questions about those days ; we can listen to what He has to

26

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

say to us about them. We can tell Him about our own
day’s work and compare notes with Him: “Did You find
the work so tiring ? Were Your customers unreasonable
and hard to please ? Did your back pain You after the
continual bending over the carpenter’s bench? Didn’t You
know much better than St. Joseph how to make things?—
You Who made the whole world! How did You force
Yourself to spend thirty years of Your short life in such a way,
with the whole world waiting for Your teaching and Your
deliverance ? ”, etc., etc. Then we should talk to Him of our
own life, of our difficulties, of our failings, of our short­
comings, of our sins. Oh, yes! especially of our sins! . . .
for this Man receiveth sinners and shall save His people
from their sins. The sins for which we are truly sorry can
bind us to Our Saviour, and the great secret of all intercourse
and close partnership with Jesus is to give Him a chance to
be to us a Saviour.
If there is some particular difficulty in our life, if there is
something unpleasant we have to face that very day, let us
speak to Him about that. If there is something that keeps
coming in as a distraction, let us turn that into a prayer by
talking to Our Lord about it. Let us tell Him about the things
that give us so much trouble in our daily work ; let us tell
Him of some attachment that we cannot or even do not
want to break. The great way to convert distractions into
prayer, and to change a bad or an imperfect will into holy
determination, is to talk to Our Lord about them, just as one
speaks to a friend, remembering that He is appointed by God
to save us from our sins and from all that leads to sin or
negligence. We must never forget that since He is God, He
is omnipotent, and therefore that there is absolutely no depth
of sin or of weakness, of darkness or of despair, from which
He cannot or will not deliver us. Nor may we forget the
intense love that made Him deliver Himself up to the
tortures of the Cross for us. Therefore, there is no one

TOWARDS AFFECTIVE PRAYER

27

who need be afraid, no one who has not the right to draw
near to Him, to talk to Him, to show Him his sins, to speak
to Him of his spiritual life in any of its aspects, as one talks
to a doctor about sickness, to a friend about one’s affairs,
or to a lover about one’s life, with its sorrows and joys, its
hopes and its fears.
The underlying principle in this way of acting is one that
must be emphasised as of capital importance in all phases of
the spiritual life. It is this: the essential point is to get
into touch with Jesus as early as possible in the spiritual life,
in each of its exercises, especially that of prayer, and to keep
in touch with Him by all possible means and at all costs.
This way of acting will remove from meditation the elements
that make it distasteful and difficult to certain types of souls.
It is also a remedy for a very common misunderstanding of
the true nature of mental prayer, for many people have the
notion that this is purely a mental exercise, a work of the
intellect and its attendant faculties, to discover truth, to
understand it, to form convictions and to lead to resolutions—
a work of the head but not at all of the heart. In reality, all
this is merely the prelude to prayer; it is not prayer itself.
There is another consideration to be urged in this con­
nection. For many souls, an abstract or impersonal view of
virtue, of perfection, of the joy of heaven, or of any such
consideration, will generally leave the heart untouched and
excite no desires. It neither produces prayer nor presses
one on to the practice of virtue. Personal contact with Our
Lord puts the whole spiritual life in an entirely different light
and, often without much explicit consideration or particular
resolutions, leads the soul unconsciously on to the practice
of many virtues and puts new energy into its spiritual course.
An analogous effect is seen in human affairs, where one is
led and encouraged by the example of one’s friends, while the
capacity of a man in love to change his most characteristic
ways and forget his selfishness is proverbial. This point

28

DIFFICULTIES IN MENI AL PRAYER

could be developed at length—for the spiritual life is a love
affair with Jesus—but space forbids. Let it suffice to say that
this is a principle that will solve many, if not all, of the
difficulties in the life of the soul, for Jesus is the Way, the
Truth, and the Life. Even in the dry and arid stages of
contemplative prayer, when the soul seems incapable of a
good thought or affection, when God seems to be nothing
more than a word of three letters—we can still keep in touch
with Jesus. The real contact with Him is made by faith—
faith in his love and mercy. We lay hold of Him by hope
and we cling to Him by love, however dry our act of love
may be, as long as it is an act of the will accepting the will
of God. But further discussion of this point must wait for
a later chapter.
There is one abuse of mental prayer which it might be well
to indicate here, one into which all those who teach or
preach are liable to fall. It consists in making their mental
prayer a preparation of the mind for work, rather than a
stirring-up of the will to pray and to love. Some, too, spend
the time of meditation “ preaching ” to themselves, being
chiefly interested in finding fine thoughts and words to do so
to their own satisfaction. Talking to Our Lord “ in one’s
own words ” should be a remedy for tins disease. Sometimes
the list of acts prescribed in the book we use is so long and so
detailed that it crushes our efforts and makes the whole thing
sheer drudgery. It can be taken as a guiding principle that
no one should ever feel bound to exhaust all the acts on
the list. If any one act is sufficient to keep us occupied,
it should not be put aside on the plea of going on to the
next one. As long as the heart is occupied with God,
whether in speech or in silence, that is enough.
Another way in which too much attention to a method
can interfere with our success at prayer is that it may have
the result that all our acts become “ reflex ” acts. Not
merely do we make an act, say, of faith, but we watch

TOWARDS AFFECTIVE PRAYER

i9

ourselves doing so, and that rather critically, taking notes all
the time of everything we do. Apart from being no small
burden, this may lead to a harmful pre-occupation with one’s
self instead of with God. This is the ruin of any prayer, for
prayer is a pre-occupation with God, and the higher ways of
prayer are absolutely impossible if a soul refuses to lose sight
of itself and its own efforts. In somewhat the same way,
continual contemplation of one’s own failings and fruitless
endeavours can only lead to discouragement, unless at the
same time we keep God and His loving mercy before our
mind. The remedy for all such ills is familiar intercourse
with Jesus.
It might seem that in thus putting the soul in contact with
Jesus, and setting it in conversation with Him on the subject
of the meditation, we are merely returning to the
“ composition of place ” and “ application of the senses ”
prescribed in the method. Indeed, there is no reason why
we should not do so, to some extent at least, for if we do not
steady the sense faculties in some such way, they may upset
the whole prayer by their wanderings. But there is a difference
of perspective here which would seem to be of importance.
Apart from the fact that this way of approach is more
spontaneous, and automatically adapts itself to the degree of
prayer which the individual soul has reached, it has this
particular feature : it puts one in contact with Our Lord as
a living Master, Model and Lover, here and now present to
the soul. The importance of this point seems to be capital,
and it should make a great difference to the prayer and
fervour of many souls.

CnXPTER Vil

AFFECTIVE PRAYER

REQUENT mention has already been made of “ affective ”
prayer, and, indeed, its nature has already been
indicated, if only in passing. The subject, however,
needs some further treatment. Those familiar with the
methodical plan for mental prayer will remember that the
consideration of each point was to be followed by certain
“ acts,” and the whole prayer was to terminate in a “ colloquy ”
or conversation with God or with some of His saints. When
these acts and the colloquy are extended to take up the
greater part of the time of prayer, the prayer is called
“ affective prayer.” it is, therefore, a natural development
of meditation, and, in fact, if meditation does not include
some affective prayer, it is not prayer at all. There is,
therefore, in practice no hard and fast division between the
two forms. In affective prayer the considerations, either on
account of long familiarity with the subject or of proper
spiritual reading done reflectively, take a small and very
secondary place, if indeed they are made at all. A single
glance, a moment’s reflection, is sufficient to recall and
extract all that the subject of the prayer means for us, and
the heart commences immediately to express itself in acts,
petitions, praise, or any other movements of prayer. To
all these actions the name “ affections ” is given. To under­
stand the term rightly, we must forget completely the
association of the English word “ affectionate,” for, as we have
already noticed, the name is here applied to all those
movements of the will towards God which generally manifest
themselves in acts of the various virtues. That is the reason

F

3°

AFFECTIVE PRAYER

jι

why the terin “ affective ” is given to a prayer in which these
acts predominate. It docs not, however, indicate any intensity cj
feeling or emotion.
Since this type of prayer is a personal audience or a loving
conversation with God, it is capable of as many variations as
there are persons. Therefore, no hard and fast rules can be
laid down for it. The great thing is to talk to Our Lord in
one’s own words, quite simply, about any topic that is of
mutual interest. There should be no attempt at fine words
or fine phrases. Not only does Our Lord not look for fine
speeches, but He does not even ask for good grammar. In
fact, affective prayer is often quite incoherent, one word
being used to express quite a multitude of sentiments. For
some souls, whose minds are filled with the truths therein
contained, the Holy Name of Jesus is sufficient prayer. That
one wonderful word says far more than we can ever realise.
Other souls cannot find any words to give expression to
their desires. They pray somewhat in this manner: “ I want
... I don’t know what I want. ... I just want.” And Our
Lord understands. He knows that it is Himself that they
want, whether they realise it or not. With due allowance
for the fact that different temperaments will pray in quite
different ways, it may be said that for many affective prayer
will consist in making love to Our Lord. The language of
human 'love, shorn of its grossness, is the only mode of
expression that will satisfy the need of utterance that some
souls feel. Not every one will pray in this way, but for those
to whom it is natural, the finer forms of expression of human
love are excellent models for our conversation with Our
Lord. He wants to possess our heart, and He wants to give us
His Heart, and any words that can help to that end make
a perfect prayer. In another way, also, this example of human
love may help us to realise how far this prayer can extend.
How often is the talk of lovers merely of commonplace things
—the tiny little trifles of everyday life—and yet how wrapped

32

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

up in one another they can be! So, too, in prayer our words
and even our subject may be quite commonplace, and yet
the love we give and show to Our Lord may be very great.
Other souls, of different temperament, will make use of
phrases from familiar prayers, verses of the Psalms, petitions
from the Missal, and so on. If the style of the Church’s
public prayer comes naturally to one, well and good; if not,
then no attempt should be made to cast one’s prayers in such
a style. “ Vouchsafe,” and other words of that sort, are best
left unused. Another way that may help the tongue-tied is
that suggested by St. Ignatius, of slowly repeating some vocal
prayer: the “ Our Father,” the “ Hail Mary,” “ Soul of
Christ,” the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, etc. For those
who use the Breviary, a single Psalm may be used in this
way, with great fruit. One may improvise on it and develop
some of the petitions, or may just “ free-wheel,” so to speak,
between the phrases, and let the heart show itself to God
without words. Other ways of getting into touch with Our
Lord have been indicated in previous chapters, and one’s
own devotion will find the best way for itself.
There are some errors to be avoided. A common one is
endeavouring to do all the talking oneself. The soul should
stop now and then and listen to Our Lord. He replies to
us, in our conscience, in our heart, often quite unmistakably.
Of course, in this matter one should be on guard against
self-deception by vain imaginings and “ wishful thinking,” as
the modern phrase has it. A closely-related error is to think
that one must keep up a continual flow of words when not
listening to Our Lord. As has just been said, we should
“ free-wheel ” in between the acts. The ability to do this is
often a good test of our sincerity. Thus, when we have just
told Jesus that we love Him with our whole heart, it is only
if we are sincere that we can remain silently in that
sentiment. Otherwise, we feel compelled to go on saying
something, lest we should hear Him saying to us: “ If you

AFFECTIVE FRAYE R

33

really loved Me you would not do so-and-so! ” That is one
of the ways in which Our Lord moulds us to His Heart’s
desire.
A different type of error is that of trying to feel our acts.
The essential act of love of God is made in the will and,
therefore, unless it overflows into the emotions, it in itself
cannot be felt. The well-known doctrine of true contrition
should be kept in mind in this connection. True sorrow
for sin is a turning away of the will from sin, and manifests
itself in a determination of the will to avoid it in future.
It is quite compatible with a strong animal liking for the
sinful pleasure, felt in the lower appetite, and consequent
pain in giving it up. So, too, in prayer, if our acts proceed
from the will, it does not matter whether they affect our
feeling or not. As long as we will to love God, by that very
fact, with the help of grace, we do love Him.
Apart from those times when the heart is dry and can
produce neither a good thought nor a good word, the chief
difficulties in prayer have their roots outside it. This con­
nection which exists between all prayer and the general
state of the spiritual life has not yet been dealt with. One
point may be mentioned here in connection with affective
prayer, for this sort of prayer is especially sensitive to
disorders in one’s spiritual life. Through a wrong notion of
Our Lord and of the correct attitude before Him, some souls
have great difficulty in “ letting themselves go,” and talking
to Him quite naturally when at prayer. Now, it is true that
reverence is essential to all prayer. But in private prayer we
are in converse with a God Who is in love with us, and Who
seeks so great an intimacy with us, and that with such ardour,
that He gives us His own Body and Blood for our food,
thus showing the intensity of His desire for our heart. He
wants us to talk to Him quite freely, and He will make
allowances for us if our attention to Him causes us to be
unceremonious. Besides, He Himself is the cure for all our

34

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

ills, and if there is anything wrong with our prayer, such as
lack of proper reverefice, l ie can soon put that right. It is
better, even at the risk of being wanting in reverence or of
being imperfectly disposed, to get into close touch with
Him Who came to heal our ills than to keep away from Him
through an excess of reverence. The last traces of Jansenism
are far from extinguished in our notions of piel^ !

Chapter VIII

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
ROM this point in the ascent of the mountain of prayer
there are two ways in which further progress can be
made. One is by the simplification of the actual prayer
itself at the time set for that exercise. The other is by
extending the prayer, so as to weave it into the warp of
the whole day’s work. These two ways are so closely
related to one another that it is best to treat them together.
Once prayer has become affective—that is, mainly composed
of acts as distinct from reflections—it can and should be often
renewed throughout the day by frequent aspirations, which
should always be short, often original, and generally in our
own words. They may even be qqite wordless; a smile,
a look, a sigh, a movement of the heart that we ourselves
do not even perceive, can speak volumes to such an intimate
Friend as Jesus. If this habit be developed, prayer may be
maintained, throughout our most absorbing occupations,
especially if our prayer arises out of the work in hand, in a
request for help, for patience in our difficulties, in a word of
praise for some particular disposition of God’s providence,
or if, like St. Philip Neri, one thanks God that things are
not going “ my way ” ! The practice of greeting all manifesta­
tions of God’s will—especially when they are painful—with
a smile, even thdtigh it be only an interior one, is a prayer
of great value, and one that touches the Heart of God in a
very special way.
One need not be afraid to spend part of the time of
prayer, especially of what may be called voluntary prayer as
distinct from those times of prayer marked out for us,

F

36

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

saying no word; provided, of course, that no prayer of
obligation is thus neglected. For example, a visit to the
Blessed Sacrament can be made with few or no words, and
if we find a facility in doing so, no consideration of
indulgences or other such profit should be allowed to
interfere and to lead us to plunge into a long series of
repeated vocal prayers, which will only weary the soul, give
it a distaste for prayer, and keep it away from Our Lord.
Many souls take after Martha, and are solicitous about much
speaking and many indulgences when they come to kneel at
Our Lord’s feet. Mary’s is the better part and no con­
sideration of this sort should be allowed to take it away
from us. Indeed, if we recall the dispositions necessary to
gain the full value of a plenary indulgence, we may realise
that the person who spends most of his time quietly at Our
Lord’s feet is far more likely to gain one at the first attempt
than other more “ solicitous ” souls are to do so by many
attempts.
The soul, then, may find itself able to spend some time in
a loving thought or regard of God. Prayer of which this is
characteristic may be called “ simplified ” prayer. The term
“ prayer of simplicity ” is often used for such prayer, but, as
already mentioned, it is preferable here to avoid the use of this
expression. This simplified prayer is a true prayer of very
great value, and when fully developed should not be
interfered with, either to reflect or to make distinct acts.
In practice, while it is a safe rule not to neglect those acts
for which one has a facility or an attraction, still, apart from
the case of obvious sloth, one should not try to force acts
for which there is no facility, but even, perhaps, much
distaste, especially when such a disposition is habitual. This
is even true of the more arid sort of prayer, where one is
holding on to God, to all appearances, by the very finger-tips
of the will alone. Acts—short acts—may be necessary from
time to time to recover from distractions, but beyond that

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

37

they should not be forced. In the more consoling phases of
this prayer the soul is enjoying God, and this is an exercise
of the will very pleasing to Him and most profitable to the
soul. If, however, the prayer becomes dry and distracted,
and devout affections of any sort well-nigh impossible, then
the soul is driven to praying with its will alone. This it does,
as Fr. Piny, O.P., writes, “by willing to spend all the time
of prayer in loving God, and in loving Him more than itself;
in willing to pray to God for the grace of charity; in willing
to remain abandoned to the Divine Will. One must clearly
understand that if we will to love God (leaving aside for a
moment the consideration of the part that grace plays in
this action), by that very action we actually do love Him; if,
by a real act of the will, we choose to unite ourselves in
loving submission to the Will of Him Whom we love, or
desire to love—by that very act of the will, we immediately
effect this union. Love is in truth nothing else but an act
of the will.”
The idea that we can pray without a series of carefullyworded acts is so new to some people that it may be well to
discuss it a little further. Authors have recourse to the
example of a mother with her child to illustrate this truth.
How many unspoken acts of love and admiration does she
not make, often quite unknown to herself, as she sits beside
the child’s cradle! How much does her silence say to the
child as she presses it in her arms! Even in human friendship,
and still more in human love, the eloquence of silence, the
rich expressiveness of a look or of a smile, need no telling.
So, too, in our relations with God we can sometimes say al)
that He wants us to say in silence and repose. This, of course,
is not a prayer for all souls, nor for all times. Yet, if we
pause occasionally between our acts and just kneel before
God in a state of sincere resignation to His will, it will often
happen that we find it possible and profitable to remain in
this disposition for a short while. If this be the case, let us

38

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

be assured that then we are really praying, for we are making
acts of faith, of hope, and of charity, we are pleasing God,
and silently begging His grace and mercy. Prayer made in
this fashion may be often possible during visits to the Blessed
Sacrament. Those who find a facility in it, and wish for
further teaching on the subject, would do well to consult
the second part of Fr. de Caussade’s work, On Prayer, or his
smaller book, Progress in Prayer.
One advantage of this simplification of prayer is that it
becomes easier to extend it into one’s working hours.
This is a tremendous advance towards the solution of perhaps
the most important problem in our sanctification : the
sanctification of our day’s work. If we sanctify our work
we have sanctified ourselves. Of course, there are various
degrees of this type of prayer. Sometimes there is no great
difficulty in keeping all the faculties occupied with God;
they even experience those sensible consolations that God
sometimes sends, even to beginners. At other times the
imagination is quite empty, and goes olf wandering on its
own; even the intellect can find nothing on which to fasten.
It is only through faith that the will holds on to God. Still,
in all these cases it is possible to preserve the essential
features of this prayer during one’s daily work. The will is
turned to God, and the other faculties give expression to
that union by doing one’s duty, which is, of course, doing
the will of God. In this way our work becomes a real prayer.
It is especially when there is question of mental work that
the advantages of this form of prayer become most evident.
It is quite possible that the real prayer of many souls who
have led a long life of fervour and persevered courageously
in their daily meditation is something of this sort. The will
is lifted up to God by faith, and, uniting itself to Him by
charity, prays to Him in this silent way; the other faculties
arc carrying out the will of God, either by meditating, or by
vocal prayer, or in any other exercise, teaching or manual

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

39

labour, that His will prescribes. In fact, it would seem that
for certain souls, some such occupation for the lower faculties
—the recitation of the Rosary or the use of ejaculations, for
example,—is a necessary condition for the exercise of this
prayer of faith. That is why it may often be true that a soul
is raised to this degree of prayer, who seems still to be busy
with vocal prayer and meditation. There is no need to lay
further stress on the advantages of such a prayer of faith,
especially for priests or for active religious; they have even
more need of it than the members of contemplative orders.
With it they can make their life one continual prayer, so
that they can truly say: to work is to pray.

Chapter IX

GOODNESS OF LIFE

N previous chapters we have been regarding prayer as the
intercourse of a loving friendship with God, and have
seen how it can develop and progress in the same way
as does the intimacy between human friends. It is true, of
course, that prayer is a supernatural act, and is, therefore,
completely dependent on the grace of God. This is a part of
our subject which we have not yet discussed. But, up to
this stage at any rate, the workings of grace are so closely
parallel to those of nature, that this view of a “ natural ”
development in intimacy with God is quite justified.
In passing we may take occasion of this parallel to notice
an error, one more widespread than might be expected,
which often stifles the growth of prayer. This is the belief
that there is no simplified type of prayer after the discursive
plodding of a prelude-and-point meditation except those
extraordinary occurrences, such as visions and ecstasies, that
sometimes accompany the higher stages of contemplation, but
which, in fact, arc purely accidental and quite unnecessary for
the full development of prayer. This is a capital error. Prayer
develops just as human intimacy develops, and, like it, has
its seasons and its variations. If, therefore, our way of praying
is not adapted to the particular state of our intimacy with
God, there is bound to be difficulty. If, for example, one is
ready and fitted for affective prayer, meditation—that is,
discursive prayer—becomes a profitless burden; if, perhaps,
one act or one type of act is sufficient to keep the soul
occupied at prayer, then any striving to multiply these acts

I

4°

GOODNESS OF LIFE

4'

will be found most difficult and disturbing. If the heart
wants to speak to God without words, any attempt to force
it to make a series of distinct acts may destroy the prayer.
Again, if God gives His grace to the will alone, and wishes
us to unite ourselves to Him in naked faith, any effort to set
the mind or the imagination to work will only be a
distraction, and is really a resistance to grace. Then, too,
souls who have once reached a high degree of prayer and then
fallen into some serious infidelity, cannot resume their
former manner of praying without repairing the fault; and
though they will not have, to climb up the whole of the
ladder again, yet their restoration has its own problems.
Thus, each degree of intimacy with Our Lord has its proper
manner of prayer, and difficulties can arise from failure to
choose the right one.
But the greatest difficulties in prayer, and the greatest
obstacles to its progress, have their roots outside prayer in
the general condition of our spiritual life. On the sincerity
of our purpose, the truth of our loyalty, the genuineness of
our love—on such things does our prayer greatly depend.
Everything that can make or mar friendship and its intimacy
will make or mar prayer. We have already noted how the
familiarity with God and His teaching that comes from
spiritual reading is essential to prayer, and can be a great
help for its progress; this, however, is by no means
sufficient. The fundamental dispositions from which prayer
flows, and on which its progress depends, are humility,
confidence, and a thirst and need for God which shows itself
in seeking Elim in prayer and, in fact, at all times by doing
His Divine will. Any defect in these dispositions will be
reflected in a corresponding failure in prayer.
Prayer will not develop unless the soul is advancing towards
the fourfold purity of conscience, of heart, of mind, and of
action. As to the first of these, prayer is a loving intimacy with
God. Now, this is impossible if the conscience is stained with

42

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

a deliberate habit of sin, for that is a direct denial of love to
God and a definite withdrawal of part of our heart and our
life from Him. Even an habitual infringement of a rule, in
which we deliberately persist after we have adverted to it,
makes it impossible for us to try to look God in the face,
so to speak, to go into His presence with that readiness of
heart for His service, which is the secret of all true devotion
and prayer. That is why it is so important that every priest
or religious, and every soul who wishes to advance, should
try to look God in the face, in all reverence, at least once
every day, without rushing into some form of vocal prayer.
In its perfection, purity of conscience consists in a firm
disposition of the will never to consent deliberately to any
offence against God or to any departure from His holy will,
and is such that as soon as any act is seen to be opposed to
the will of God, it is immediately retracted. Faults of frailty
and thoughtlessness will always occur, but we must try more
and more to prevent all deliberate faults; and as often as
they occur,even be it seventy times seven times in the day,
we must so often immediately renounce them and seek God’s
pardon by a glance of contrition and confidence in Fl is mercy.
In this way we shall gain more in humility than we have lost
by our fault, and the confident return to God can give Him
more honour than the offence has denied to Him. It is,
therefore, an illusion to hope to become a man of prayer
while one comes to terms with the enemy. Human weakness
and bad habits will cause many a defeat, but the war must be
kept up with unceasing courage, and with a grim determina­
tion to keep the conscience clean of all that can offend God.
Purity of heart consists in keeping all the affections of the
heart for God alone. It is not enough to rule out all sinful
attachments, for if our heart is divided by any inordinate
attachment, even to lawful recreations, to our work, to
persons, or to anything else, w'e cannot say we love God
with our whole heart. There always will be attachments in

Goodness of life

4J

the human heart, but they must be subordinate to God and
to His will, so that they can never usurp His place as the
mainspring of our actions. The spiritual life is a love affair
with Jesus ; I le has given us His whole Heart, pouring out
for us the last drop of His Blood in the agonising death of
the Cross ; He demands the whole of our heart, and we
cannot refuse to want, at least, to give it all to Him.
Without this willingness it is impossible to remain in loving
silence before' Our Lord. Nothing so darkens our gaze on
God, nothing so weakens our desire for God, nothing so
lessens our striving for God, nothing so deafens our hearing
for God, as a single inordinate attachment. That is the great
source of many difficulties in prayer.
Nor are the baneful effects of such attachments confined to
this simplified prayer of silence. The very first “ act ” we
try to make at prayer rings hollow and false in our own ears,
as soon as we are conscious that we are dividing our heart
between God and His creatures. And we cannot be intimate
with God for long before He points out to us some of those
attachments that cause rapine in the holocaust; for God is
a jealous God—He is a consuming fire.
Under purity of mind we include the careful and constant
control of our thoughts and memories, by prudently
excluding all that is unnecessary, frivolous and vain, and by
gradually building up a continual recollection of God and
His works. This is also one of the most important of all
mortifications for those who would progress in the spiritual
life, and far more effective than the most penitential
macerations of the flesh. In fact, without it, corporal penance
is almost useless. This internal mortification should be
extended to the control of our emotions, especially those of
anger, fear, hope, sorrow and joy. The man whose hope,
love and trust are fixed in God does not give way to anger
when God sends him trials or when people try his patience
to its limits, nor does he vainly fear God’s loving Providence,

4+

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

which he knows covers every single detail of his life. Nor,
again, docs sorrow at his material losses enter deeply into
his heart when it is set on the riches of God; and the joys
of this life seem trivial, aye, unworthy even, to one who
knows the delight of God’s love.
Purity of action, which is often called purity’ of intention,
consists in a continual watch over the motives which animate
our actions, and in a constant effort to act only for the
love of God and according to Elis will. It demands a
relentless war on that self-love that is always seeking to
inspire all our deeds. When a religious has settled down in
the religious life, and has become faithful in his observance
of the rule, further progress is to be sought for, not in
violent efforts to do extraordinary actions, but in an everincreasing purity of intention in the ordinary works of every­
day life. This is the surest way, in fact—apart from very
special cases—it is the only way, to fulfil that law of Christian
perfection, which St. John the Baptist so well laid down:
“ He must increase—I must decrease.” All search for our
own honour, for our own undue ease, all self-seeking,
however much it be cloaked by the plea of altruistic motives,
or the search of higher sanctity, is dii'fcctly opposed to that
great rule given us by Christ of denying ourselves and
following Him.
This, perhaps, may seem too hard, and might lead only to
discouragement. But perfection of this fourfold purity is not
required for progress in prayer, for such perfection is
synonymous with sanctity; we must, however, continually
strive towards these dispositions of purity. We must desire
this purity, we must pray for it, we must make earnest
efforts to acquire it. But without a special help from God,
it is unlikely that we should achieve a sufficient measure of it.
There is, however, no limit to God’s goodness, and it is at
this stage that He is accustomed to intervene, taking compas­
sion on our infirmities; after we have been toiling all night

GOODNESS OF LIFE

4Î

and caught little or nothing, He acts through His special
Providence, and in a short time He has advanced us beyond
all expectation. But He demands that we do our part, that
we keep on putting out to sea, so to speak, and persevere
in our attempts to make ourselves pleasing to Him, and to
pray to Him, no matter how fruitless they appear. The
perfect picture that St. Teresa of Lisieux has drawn of the
spiritual life will help to give us courage. She sees it as a
stairway to be climbed, at the top of which God is waiting,
looking down in Fatherly love at His child’s efforts to
surmount the first step.
The child, who represents
ourselves, fails to manage to climb even the first step; it
can only keep on lifting up its tiny little foot. Sooner or later
God takes pity on it, and comes down and sweeps the child
right up to the top in His arms; but—and St. Teresa insists on
this as much as she insists on God’s loving kindness—we
must keep on lifting up our foot. The soul must never be
discouraged by the fruitlessness of its repeated efforts. It
seems to be a law of the spiritual life that, since all progress
ultimately depends on God, He lets us first learn our
complete helplessness by long and weary efforts that come
to naught. But we have His word: “1 Myself will come
and save you! ”

Chapter X

PRAYER AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
HE discussion of prayer has already been carried far
enough to let it be seen that the essential core of prayer
is the act of the will, turning to God, seeking God,
and uniting itself to God—to God, be it understood, as
known by faith. It is evident, then, that there is a close
connection between prayer and the rest of the spiritual life,
and that, in fact, as progress is made, the distinction between
them tends to disappear, and prayer overflows from the
times set apart for it, and begins to penetrate the rest of the
day, so that, whether in word or in work, the soul is always
lifted up to God in a union of love. This close connection
between the different parts of the spiritual life, as well as
their mutual dependence, exists from the very beginning.
Prayer and practice are really two branches of the same tree
of charity. In every tree, the life of each branch depends
upon the vital sap that flows into it from the trunk, while
the branches in turn supply the whole tree, as well as each
other, with food and strength drawn by the leaves from the
air and from the sun. So too in this tree of charity, the
branches of prayer and practice depend for their vigour upon
the vital sap of grace that comes to them from the super­
natural life of the soul ; while that life in turn is itself nourished
and strengthened by the activity of each branch, for the
branches of prayer and practice draw into the whole spiritual
organism the riches of the Divine atmosphere and the energy
of the Divine sun towards which they stretch forth the leaves
of deeds and desires. In fact, in this tree of charity there is
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47

no difference between the roots and the branches ; for love
grows by loving, and loves by growing.
The way, therefore, which leads to progress in prayer is
exactly the same as that which leads to progress in virtue.
That is why progress in prayer is here being put before
priests and religious, especially before “ active ” religious, as
an integral part of the essential programme of their state.
The primary purpose of every religious congregation is not
that particular work, such as preaching or teaching or
nursing, which is peculiar to each. It is the sanctification of
each individual member. There is, then, an obligation on
each individual religious to tend to perfection, and this
obligation is the primary duty of his state of life, one which
comes before all others. Therefore, every religious who is
really living up to his obligations, is doing all that is necessary
to facilitate progress in prayer. More than that, since prayer
is the most powerful means to advance in perfection, and
since its power increases with its development, no religious
can dare neglect to try to advance in prayer, nor say that
such things are not for him. Progress in prayer is the result
of progress in virtue, and progress in virtue inevitably follows
from progress in prayer. The more we make our life
conformable to the Will of God, the more facility we find
in the practice of prayer. In fact, the great difficulty in
prayer is that our wills—in other words, our hearts—
are not wholly given to God.
It follows, then, that there need be no hesitation in setting
before priests and before the members of any religious
congregation a programme of prayer that leads to, and
includes, the higher states of prayer, even those states that
some authors consider to be essentially different from
“ ordinary ” prayer. As far as the effort outside the time of
prayer is concerned, any priest who is living up to the
demands of his office, or any religious who is doing all he is
required to do by his state, is also doing all that is required

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

to make progress in prayer. If such progress be not
noticeable where there is generous fidelity to all duties, it
must be remembered that there are many holy and humble
souls w’ho have great gifts of prayer quite unknown to
themselves. Prayer, as we have seen, can become so
“ simplified ” as to escape the grasp of one’s own conscious­
ness. Further, the ratio between progress and prayer is not
the same for all. Some go far in perfection and, at least, seem
to be still in the elementary stages of prayer; while, on the
other hand, God may give some of His best graces to souls
who are still far from perfection. Prayer is a means to
perfection; it is not perfection jtself. One thing may be
confidently stated: If more souls set themselves to pray, and
to keep on trying to pray better, a far greater number of them
would come to their due perfection, and that with less
difficulty, than if they treated prayer as some mere incidental
exercise of their spiritual life—one which, after all, could
be done without. In this matter, members of the more active
congregations have no right to consider that prayer such as
we now are describing is not for them. It is true, perhaps,
that in the contemplative orders it should be easier for souls
to advance in prayer; it is true, also, regrettably true, that
the day’s time-table of some religious is so crammed with
work, and that the demands on their energies are so extensive,
that little time or energy can be found to develop the interior
Ijfe. Yet it is nevertheless true that the graces of prayer arc
offered to active religious just as to everybody else, and that
the co-operation needed on their part is nothing more than
that to which they are already bound by the essential duty
of their state. The legitimate “ activities ” of religious are no
barrier to the work of God’s grace; in fact, they are an
inst rument of that grace, and it may be said that if a religious,
after many years in religion, has not reached his due state of
perfection in prayer, it is, up to a point, not so much because
he is a member of an active religious congregation, but rather

prayer and the spiritual life

49

because his activities have not been as supernaturalized and
as interior as is required by his chief duty as a religious.
To facilitate prayer, therefore, and to advance in it, there
must be great fidelity to God’s will. Rules and all other
manifestations of God’s desires must be faithfully followed,
and the details of the common life as well as one’s own daily
duties have to be carried out with great exactness and
watchful purity of intention. Then there is need of readiness
in corresponding with grace, and of generosity in refusing
God nothing for which He clearly is asking. The more one
abandons oneself to God’s will by cheerfully accepting all its
dispositions and lovingly trusting to all its plans, the quicker
shall he advance, and the sooner shall the purgative
operations of God’s action on the soul come to an
end. The aim of the soul ought always to be to second
God’s work for its sanctification. Above all, since humility
is the foundation of the whole spiritual life, and since God
wants the soul to be humble at all costs, it should cheerfully
and generously accept all the humiliations that He sends to it.
This will have another effect, for it removes what is a frequent
source of distractions at prayer: the unconscious tendency
to try to heal the wounds of our self-love by gratifying
thoughts and imaginings, by those foolish dreams and reveries
that interfere so much with prayer.
The importance of interior mortification must never be
forgotten. There can be no progress in prayer without a
mortified life. Now, this docs not mean a life of great corporal
penance. It is our self-love that we must mortify, and to
attempt extraordinary or unusual corporal penances, without
a clear call from God, and the approval of some proper
authority, is usually only a subtle form of self-seeking. There
should, of course, be sufficient corporal penance to keep the
body in subjection. The rules and the customs of one’s order
are the best guide in this matter. Owing to the prominence
given by some writers to the extraordinary mortifications

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

practised by some of the saints, many people have got the
notion that these things are essential to holiness. The life of
St. Teresa or Lisieux is sufficient to correct this error. It must
always be remembered that it is by interior mortification of
the memory, of the imagination and of the emotions, and by
the ready acceptance of hinni liât ions that the greatest and
the quickest progress is made. To give free rein to one’s
thoughts, to indulge in reveries, to build castles in the air,
to dwell continually on old memories, to nurse one’s
grievances, to allow wounded pride to dictate one’s thoughts
or feelings—all such habits are fatal to a life of prayer. No
matter what corporal penances be practised, the priest or
religious who cannot refrain from airing his grievances and
proclaiming his wrongs, looking for sympathy when slighted,
and even seeking an opportunity of retaliation, is far from being
truly mortified, and, unless he amends, cannot be an intimate
friend of Our Lord.
Of great importance is fidelity to the inspirations of grace—
to those invitations of the Spirit of God asking for our
co-operation in some particular work or sacrifice. It is by
these motions of grace that God adapts His plan to, and makes
provisions for, the individual needs and circumstances of
each soul. They are of especial importance in the spiritual
life of a priest in the world. To refuse these invitations,
especially to do so habitually, is really to extinguish the
Spirit. The whole spiritual life is a partnership with Christ
and His Spirit; prayer is, as it were, the meeting or
interview—one might well call it a lover’s tryst—where we
assure God of our love and of our co-operation, where we
manifest our union with Him and even find joy in that union.
Now, if the rest of our day gives the lie to our protestations
and contradicts our promises, we cannot meet God with
sincere sentiments of love or co-operation; thus, prayer
becomes “ difficult ” and even impossible. That, probably,
is why so many souls fail to advance far in the way of prayer.

PRAYER AND THE SPIRITUAL LIEE

p

It is not because God has refused them the graces of prayer,
but because they have refused God that co-operation with what
we might call the prayers of His grace—the invitations to work
in union with Him,—because they have refused Him that
co-operation which is the necessary fulfilment and foundation
of the sincerity of affective prayer. When we speak to God,
we must mean what we say; we must practice what we
have promised; we must show forth in work what we say
in word.

Chapter XI

THE PATH OF PROGRESS

HERE is another consideration which makes it desirable,
if indeed it is not also necessary, that the different ways
of prayer should be put before every priest and every
religious, and this, not merely as speculative knowledge
having no relation to practice, but as practical methods of
prayer that everyone may have occasion to employ. But it
needs some introduction in the form of a discussion of the
path by which we ascend to the heights of prayer. It is quite
true that there is an age-old division of the spiritual life
into three stages—those, namely, of beginners, proficients
and the perfect—dating almost from apostolic times. It is
true, also, that progress in prayer has been divided into three
ways corresponding to each of these stages. It is further
true that the rising path of prayer has been divided into
various steps by such great authorities as St. Teresa, and by
many theologians of experience and renown. To this
tradition of treatment, to this weight of precedent and this
example of practice, might be added the kind suggestions of
those whose advice was sought in penning these lines,
recommending definite division of the spiritual life into wellmarked steps, with detailed definitions of each type of prayer
and classified treatment of the difficulties arising in each
class. Yet we have deliberately refrained from too exact an
attempt at definition, and also from any clean-cut classifica­
tion of the different stages in the growth of prayer, with
well-marked divisions between each stage. In doing so, we
do not question for a moment the truth of the principles
latent in such a scientific procedure as that of tradition.

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But this is not a theoretical text-book discussing the difficulties
of prayer in general or abstract terms; it is rather an attempt
to help individual souls to deal with their own difficulties,
and it looks at the spiritual life, not in a scientific, objective
manner, but from the subjective point of view of the
individual, treating it as it appears to the individual in
practice.
Now, if the experience of a large number of souls, of
different age, experience, temperament and time, be taken
and averaged out, it will be found that the classical divisions
and conclusions are quite accurate and well justified. But if
one were to measure a number of men, take the average of
their different dimensions, and make a suit of clothes
according to these average measurements, the probability is
that there would hardly be any one man whom the suit would
fit properly. So it is with prayer. The experiences of each
individual, and the way in which it seems to him that his
prayer develops, are not to be brought under the letter of a
general law. In particular, wide variations will be found in
the sequence in which the different degrees of prayer succeed
one another. Even in those whose path most closely follows
the classical signposts—meditation, affective prayer, simplified
prayer, arid contemplation, prayer of union, etc.,—these
divisions only represent an average over a period in which
one particular type of prayer predominated. It is even not
impossible that in the stage marked meditation, there were
times when each of the other types of prayer were practised.
It is unlikely, of course, that all were there. Quite
conservatively-minded authors point out that a number of
souls start with affective prayer. Many generous beginners
have been given, for a short time at least, the graces of
contemplation. The task of prescribing for each soul must
thus be approached with an open mind,' and a full selection
of prescriptions.
In addition to this variety apparently inherent in the

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

nature of the case, it would seem that in view of the
necessities of these critical times and the fearful strength of
the forces in active opposition to Christianity, God is even
more ready than usual to pour out His generous graces of
prayer on souls who are willing to make use of them. No
matter what his state in life, there is hardly any soul who sets
himself seriously to the pursuit of prayer and of holiness, of
whom it could be said with any confidence that he will not be
offered the highest graces of prayer. Therefore, it would seem
desirable that every soul should have a practical knowledge
of the different ways of praying, and should be prepared
to use each according to the varying conditions of grace, of
fervour, and of the general weather of his spiritual life. That
means that he should be prepared to go up higher if God
invites him, and should be ready, with equal cheerfulness
and holy indifference to resume the tedious task of meditation,
if, all else failing, this should become profitable. That is not to
assert that there will be no general development of his prayer ;
all that has been here written makes it clear that in a healthy
spiritual life, some such growth is almost inevitable. But
it is very probable that the course of prayer, looked at from
day to day, will manifest all sorts of variations and call for a
command of various methods. It is noteworthy that St. John
of the Cross includes under the one term—that of medita­
tion—the different varieties of prayer that we have been
discussing.
That is why exact definitions or clear delineation have
been avoided. One can define terms with accuracy; but
clear definition of states presupposes the existence of quite
distinct and definite divisions in the growth of prayer, which
are not so easy to find in practice, especially when looked
for in the case of an individual soul. It is even a task of great
difficulty to mark but the border-line between the general
stage of ordinary prayer and the beginning of what many call
infused contemplation. If, therefore, a certain indefiniteness

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is apparent in the present treatment of the development of
prayer, it is because this seems to be more in accordance with
the facts of individual experience. That is also why one may
feel justified in treating the difficulties of the different ways
of praying in an unclassified way.
There is one weapon—one way—that is essential for
dealing with all difficulties and for making progress in prayer.
That is, a firm resolution never to cease trying, never to give
up praying, no matter what difficulties arise, no matter how
small the measure of success, no matter what the cost is
going to be. When we decide to become men of prayer, we
make a declaration of war, not only on our lower selves, but
on the devil himself. Nothing but resolute courage and firm
unshakeable confidence in God can enable us to persist in that
combat. But if we are generous and do our best, even if
that be little more than to glory in our infirmities, then we
can be sure of God’s assistance, for it is a theological
principle that to those who use what little grace they may
already possess, God will not refuse His further grace.
There is one difficulty, a most common one, which will
test the strength of this resolution; that is, the continual
struggle against distractions. These troubles may, of course,
have their origin outside prayer, in some attachment, some
unmortified curiosity, some morbid brooding over humilia­
tions, for example; they may be due to a failure to recollect
oneself generously and completely at the beginning of the
prayer. In- these cases the remedy is obvious. They may,
however, be due to fatigue; for if the powers of the mind
are hard at work all day, it is not easy for them to make the
effort necessary to remain attentive to what may be a very
difficult task. In this case, when the distracting work is of
God’s appointing and not due to our own self-seeking, we
can only glory in our infirmities, and hope in God’s grace.
Again, distractions may be due to the natural instability of
the mind, especially of the imagination. It is a psychological

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER
law that one idea tends to call up another, according to the
well-known principles of association and contrast, so that
the very effort to make one idea clear may be the means of
starting a distraction. Distractions, again, may arise from the
fact that the subject of our prayer, or the workings of God’s
grace, make no appeal to the imagination, to our natural
tastes, or even to the more familiar part of our intellectual
powers. In this latter case especially, the imagination and
its attendants seem to run riot, and any attempt to recall
them will only draw away the attention from the real prayer,
which is going on in the depths of the soul, in what one might
call the “ invisible light ” of faith. In all these cases, all we
can do is to renew our attention to God according to the
way in which we are praying to Him. This should be done
gently and quietly, without vexation, or even without
surprise at our own folly.
If we could only realise how much this continual turning
back to God shows Him our real love for Him and pleases
Him more than that rapt attention that has its roots in selflove, we should never be dissatisfied with our prayer on
account of its numerous distractions. If prayer be a lifting
up of the mind to God, then every time we turn away from
distractions to renew our attention to God, we pray—and
we pray in the teeth of difficulty and despite ourself. What
can be more pleasing to God?—what more meritorious? We
should be very greatly surprised if we could get a glimpse
at the account book that the recording angel keeps, and see
the different values he sets on our various attempts at prayer.
The prayer that pleased us, and with which we were wrell
satisfied, would often be quite low in his estimate, while the
prayer that disgusted us, which was apparently made up of
nothing but distractions, might be found to have won a very
high degree of his approval.
Sometimes the mere return to God is sufficient to banish
the distraction; but very often the same distracting thought

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keeps coming back, despite our attempts to get rid of it.
One way of dealing with such obstinate intruders is to make
them the subject of prayer. With a little ingenuity, some
relation can be found between the distracting idea and God.
It may, perhaps, give us something to pray for; it may serve
as a motive to praise God; it could be used as an evidence
of our need for His grace. Whatever it is, God made it,
and allowed it to come into our minds, so that there is always
some way that leads back from it to God. If all else fail, we
can fall back upon the advice of the author of The Cloud for
dealing with distractions, that we should endeavour to look
over tbeir shoulders, as if we were looking at some object
beyond them and above them,—which is God. There is an
excellent chapter on distractions in Holy Wisdom (Sancta
Sophia), by Fr. Baker, O.S.B., a work to which these pages
owe much, and which is in the same tradition. The part of
his book that deals with prayer will be found very helpful,
and has been published separately by Dorn Weld-Blundcll,
O.S.B., under the title Trayer and Holiness.
Another way of looking at prayer may help us when we feel
we cannot pray at all. Let us regard the time of prayer as an
appointment with God. If for His own wise reasons He
decides not to keep the appointment, that is His will and,
therefore, to be praised. For our part, by kneeling there,
helpless, and almost hopeless, we are doing what He wants
us to do, and we can confidently leave the result to Him.
These helpless half-hours spent fighting sleep and distraction,
“ getting nowhere,” as the phrase has it, have a providential
part to play in our sanctification. Distractions which are
not deliberate are a trial, not a fault; let us accept them
cheerfully and confidently. In His own good time God will
come and save us.

Chapter XII

THE DIFFICULTIES OF NOT PRAYING
O far we have been considering the difficulties of prayer;
we have also seen that prayer is capable of development,
and we have realised how closely connected it is with the
spiritual life, so that no progress in one is possible without
earnest efforts in the other. Forgetting, perhaps, that he is
already bound to these efforts by the very habit he wears,
a religious may allow their apparent difficulty to deter him
from seeking proficiency in prayer. Before going on to treat
of any further advance in prayer with its difficulties, it would
be well to see what alternative lies before such a religious.
Quite apart from the fact that the pain and effort involved
in the attempt to advance in the spiritual life bring with them
their own consolation and strength, in a more intimate and
more conscious union with Jesus which can rob them of all
their hardship, they are also counterbalanced by the removal
of the greatest of all forms of unhappiness—half-hearted
service in religion. To a religious whose heart is not in his
search for union with God, life is a perpetual misery. The
whole of the religious life is designed to lead us—to carry
us, in fact—towards that goal of Divine union. Any other
course, or any lagging behind, is continually causing us to
rub against the grain of the whole life, and to pull against
its steady stream. If a religious who thus turns away from
the main purpose of his state seeks distraction by getting
absorbed in his work, he is continually fretting against the
innumerable obstacles and hindrances that the limitation of
his rule of life puts in the way of complete success in that
direction. If he try to find peace in the pursuit of some
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lower pleasure, he soon finds that he must go to extremes to
try to drown the prickings of his conscience and the pangs
of that deep-seated hunger of his higher self that can find no
food in such folly, and so his days are full of ever-growing
misery. Even if he avoids such disorders, the whole round
of religious exercises becomes meaningless, senseless and
wearisome in the extreme. He is like a boy at school who
does not want to learn, a patient under treatment who does
not want to get well, a soldier in arms who is determined
not to fight. He is at continual war—if we may dignify his
squabbles by that name—with his environment.
The religious state is one in which a soul gives itself to
God, and in which God gives Himself to the soul, after He
has helped it to sacrifice itself and prepared it for this
gift. Any personal plan opposed to this end is completely
foreign to the life of that state, and sooner or later, either
such a purpose must be given up completely, or else one’s
failure as a religious has begun. But if one can make
one’s own the true purpose of that life, and view everything
in it as a divinely-planned means of uniting himself to God,
then one has found a happiness beyond all telling, and with
it the secret of cheerful patience. Many religious, for
example, find community recreation a great trial—instead of
recreating, it sometimes only irritates. Suppose, however,
that one goes to it purely to seek Jesus and to find Him by
doing His will, then one has also found a point of view that
not only makes the exercise tolerable, but even something
that can be accepted cheerfully. In a later chapter we shall
see how true it is that by doing God’s will, we find God; that
even in carrying out what appear to be the most unimportant
provisions of the rule, we are doing something which is more
pleasing to God and more efficacious for our own eternal
happiness than anything else, no matter how great or how
heroic, that we could do at that moment. Such an attitude is
of very great help in the case of those prescriptions of rule

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that often seem tedious and unreasonable. Viewed in this way,
their fulfilment becomes a constant prayer, a prolonged
spiritual communion; not only does it beseech God most
effectively to come into our hearts—it actually unites us to
Flint. Further, it is a fact that by uniting oneself to Jesus in
this fashion by cheerfully doing His will, one is also uniting
oneself to all the works of all His servants throughout the
whole universe; one is united to each priest saying Mass,
to every missioner preaching the Gospel, to every soul
praying or suffering for the sake of Christ; moreover, one
partakes of the fruit of their work, and can even share in
their reward, according to one’s loving acceptance of God’s
will and readiness in carrying out the particular duty God
has allotted to him. To seek God truly, to do His will
cheerfully, to love Him whole-heartedly—that is the only
way to true prayer and to true peace.
Not only is this interior life the only hope of each
individual in religion; it is also the only hope of the religious
state, and in calling it “ the only hope ” these words are used
in their full meaning. Our Lord Himself told His Apostles
on the night He ordained them priests and founded the
active life of the Church: “ Abide in Me, and I in you . . .
I am the Vine, you arc the branches: he that abideth in Me,
and I in him, the same beareth much fruit, for without Me
you can do nothing.” The whole discourse which He made
to them on the night before He suffered was an exhortation to
the interior life, and a clear indication that it was the only
source of their fruitfulness. In these critical times when the
Church has such need of the full co-operation of every one of
her religious, it is the interior life of prayer and penance that
she needs most, and it sometimes seems as if that is the last
help her members think of offering her. There is a danger
that under the stress of necessity arid through the contagion
from a materialistic world, our perspective may become
distorted and our scale of values upset. The wonderful works

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61

that the religious state has done for the Church and for her
members, in preaching, teaching, nursing, in all sorts of
activity, are one of the glories of Christianity. But all that
is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals if it comes not
from a life of prayer and union with God. The temptation
to forget this is a strong one. When there is need of new
school staffs, when the missions call loudly for help, when
the sufferings of the poor tear at our hearts, it is very easy
to forget the absolute necessity of a strong, sound, solid
foundation in the interior life for every single priest and for
every single religious; it is very easy to forget the absolute
necessity of sufficient leisure for prayer and for spiritual
reading and for the things of tire spiritual life. The needs of
the moment may crowd these exercises into an ever-shrinking
comer of the time-table, make ever-growing claims on the
strength and energy of priests and religious, and eventually
may come to fill the whole field of their interest. That
would be fatal ; for then there can be no more fruit, there
can be no more life, since Jesus has been crowded out of
the religious life and out of the heart of each religious—He
Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
To try to gain efficiency, either for the individual or for
the institute, by reducing the time or the interest for prayer
and spiritual exercises, is even more foolish than to try to
get more manual work done by leaving out dinner. All the
learning, all the eloquence, all the labour in the world,
cannot convert a single soul, unless some one’s prayers and
sufferings are drawing down the necessary grace. A man’s
words have no unction unless he is living a life of friendship
with Jesus. Boys, for example, will respect a man of high
principle, they will learn from a fine teacher, they will even
admire a man of penance; but unless he be a close companion
of Jesus, no teacher will ever produce that influence on the
heart and soul of the pupil that will make him too a friend
and lover of Jesus ; one might even say that unless someone

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else is at prayer on his behalf, he will not even make him a
good Catholic.
These are but examples of a truth of universal application.
The exterior life is worthless unless it flows from an interior
life, and no interior life can last long without constant and
wholehearted prayer. Now, there is no exercise of the
spiritual life that lends itself less to regimentation than
prayer, nor is there any· which regimentation so quickly
blights and withers. Prayer should be the most spontaneous
practice of all. Its healthy development in a religious con­
gregation is best assured, not by over “ organisation ” with
fixed methods and matter, but by first of all forming in each
religious the spirit of the interior life with a strong
conviction of its value and necessity, by leading him to
intimate intercourse with Jesus, and by then giving him ample
opportunity and every encouragement to develop it.

Chapter ΧΠΙ

THE PRAYER OF THE PRIEST
O many references have been made in previous chapters
to the religious life that some consideration must now
be given to the case of the priest living in the world.
It must not be thought that all that is said in this book about
the possibility of progress in prayer is one whit less true for
the priest than for the religious. The only reason why more
detailed reference has here been made to the religious life
is because this book is written by a religious, and it is only
questions of which one has immediate experience that one
can effectively treat in detail. It seemed better for a writer
who can only have second-hand knowledge of the priest’s
problems to avoid treating his difficulties in too much detail,
lest they should not receive full appreciation and under­
standing. These difficulties are such that a cloistered
contemplative who would try to deal with them too minutely,
might easily betray himself as an armchair strategist.
Yet, some reference must be made to these problems,
otherwise it might seem that prayer and perfection were
not considered feasible for priests in the world. Now, on
the contrary, progress in prayer is not only possible for
them—it is even of capital importance for them, precisely
because, as priests, their functions call for perfection.
Even though the last chapter drew its conclusions from
the fact that the primary duty and purpose of the religious
state is to tend to perfection, there is no need for us here
to discuss the perfection of the priestly state precisely as a
state. Whether the text of St. Thomas that has led to some
difference of teaching in this matter applies to present-day

S

63

6+

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

conditions is a question that need not be settled here.
(Those who wish to examine the point will find it discussed
in The Secular Priesthood by Dr. E. J. Mahoney.) St. Thomas
is quite definite in stating that the functions of the priest,
whatever about his “ state,” require greater interior sanctity
than even the religious state (cf. St. Thomas, Summa, II-II,
184, a. 8). The pronouncements of the recent Popes leave
no room for doubt about the necessity of sanctity in the
priest. It will suffice here to quote Pius X: “ There are some
who think and teach that the whole value of a priest consists
in the fact that he devotes himself to the needs of others.
How false and disastrous is such a doctrine. Personal sanctity
alone will make us the kind of men demanded by our Divine
vocation: men crucified to the world, men to whom the
things of the world are dead, men walking in the newness
of life.” (Haerent Animo, August 4th, 1908.) Succeeding
Pontiffs have only reaffirmed this principle.
It is true that a priest is not bound to the use of exactly
the same means of perfection as a religious, but that does not
lessen his obligations, for the fact is, that while the religious
state is a way to perfection and therefore open to those
who are still far from holiness, the priesthood actually
presupposes that one has already acquired holiness. (Cf. St.
Thomas, Summa, Ι1-Π, 189, a. I, ad 3.) One might say, in
fact, that whereas a religious is bound to tend to perfection
by reason of his state, the priest is only bound to do so if
he has not already attained the perfection required by his
priesthood ; his primary obligation is to be perfect.
Reference has already been made to the words used by
Our Lord Himself in addressing the Apostles after He had
ordained them priests. They are so full of light on the
present subject that they may be quoted again in full;
“ Abide in me, and 1 in you. As the branch cannot bear
fruit of itself unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you,
unless you abide in me. 1 am the vine: you the branches: he

TUE PRAYER OF THE PRIEST

6ς

that abideth in me, and 1 in him, the same bearcth much
fruit : for without me you can do nothing. If anyone abide
not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither,
and they shall gather him up, and cast him into thefre, and
he burneth. Ifyou abide in me, and my words abide in you,
you shall ask whateveryou will, and it shall be done untoyou.
In this is my Father glorified; that you bring forth very much
fruit, and become my disciples.”—(St. John xv. 4-8.)

And almost as if lie had looked down the long years and
had heard us protesting: “ But, Lord, how shall these things
be? Wc must live in the world, we must live with the
world ; so that many arid immense are the difficulties that
hold us back from such perfection! ”—He gives utterance to
the whole truth of the power and success of His mission as
our Saviour in a word that is a perfect answer to any difficulty
that a priest may find in achieving holiness:

“ In the world you shall have distress: BUT HAVE
CONFIDENCE, I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD.”
(ib. xvi. 33).
That is why it can be confidently asserted that everything
which has been written in these pages about the possibility
and the need of progress in prayer and in perfection for
religious applies a fortiori to those whom Our Lord has
chosen as His friends rather than as servants, and has made
the salt of the earth, namely, the priests of His Church.
For, once it is clear that a priest is .bound to perfection, it
follows that it must be possible for him to achieve it, no
matter what difficulties may lie in the way or what special
graces he may need to do so. In this connection the words
which Our Lord used to sum up the spiritual life of His
priests are full of significance; for how can one “abide” in
Christ if not by a life of prayer?
This point has been stressed at some length, because it
gives a remedy for the first great difficulty that priests

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

experience in perseverance in prayer, namely, the persuasion
that comes to them sooner or later, that progress in prayer
is not possible for them—that the higher stages of prayer are
only for chosen religious. The whole of this book can be
taken as an answer to that objection. Priests, in fact, have
so much in common with religious in this matter, that a
summary of some of the difficulties that may occur in the
prayer of clerical readers will find a general application.
The first difficulty—due to the notion that success is not
possible—has already been dealt with. A second difficulty is
that due to the want of proper spiritual reading. Such
reading is an essential food for a life of prayer. It must be
suited to the needs of the individual, and not done merely
for the sake of knowledge, for preaching, or for the purposes
of direction. It is because of the lack of such reading that
one often has to insist upon daily methodical meditation
instead of encouraging souls to pray.
Thirdly: many fail in mental prayer for want of a grim
determination—it must be grim, especially in the case of a
priest living in the world, if it is to prevail—never to give
up the practice of spending, say, at least half an hour daily
in an attempt to pray, no matter how unsuccessful that attempt
may seem to be. Even if the result is nothing but distractions
or drowsiness, the resolution to persevere must not be
relinquished. There is always the danger that when a priest
who has to plan his own day considers the numerous urgent
calls upon his time and the many—and apparently more
profitable—purposes to which he could devote the period
seemingly wasted in a fruitless attempt at prayer, he may
yield to the temptation to abandon such a practice. That
would be fatal. Every priest should appoint some set time
for daily prayer, preferably in the morning before Mass, but
if necessary, in the evening, and make it a strict rule never
to fail at least to try to pray then for, say, half an hour.
If the evening is chosen as more suitable, it would be well

THE PRAYER OF THE PRIEST

67

to give a short period to informal prayer in the morning, in
order to enter into partnership with Our Lord for the work
of the day. The mind of the Church about the priest’s mental
prayer is reflected in Canon 125. One may say that the
fruitfulness of the whole day’s work depends upon this
attempt at prayer, so that it must never be permanently set
aside on the plea of making a better use of the time given
to it. There is no better use possible.
Still another cause of failure is indicated by the fact that
many give up mental prayer, or at least fail to advance in it,
because of their belief that mental prayer means methodical
meditation and nothing else. When such meditation becomes
almost impossible, they either give up all attempt at mental
prayer, or else persevere by heroic efforts in the use of the
“ method,” when. they should proceed to pray without
method. At most, a method is only one way of praying,
but generally it is merely a means to prepare to pray; it is
not always successful or even helpful, and in such a case it
should be left aside.
There is also the kindred error of believing that there is
no form of prayer between such meditation and passive
contemplation. A somewhat similar difficulty can arise from
too rigid a notion of the division of progress in prayer into
three or more very well-marked stages. One is afraid, say, to
make use of simplified prayer because one’s virtues seem to
be too imperfect. Or, perhaps, one is deterred from using a
simplified form of prayer, by the impression received from
some authors who speak of a mystic state of prayer which
they call the prayer of simplicity, and which, in their opinion,
presupposes that the soul has passed through certain classical
stages of purification called “ dark nights.” At other times
we meet the opposite error of refusing to return to a lower
degree of prayer when that is necessary.
These difficulties find their solution in what has been
written in previous pages on progress in prayer. In particular,
5

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

stress must be laid on the fact that the individual’s path of
progress is not bound to follow any general law. Prayer
should be taken as it comes, without worrying too much
about what “ degree ” it is, or at what “ stage ” one has
arrived. In fact, for the individual at any particular moment,
such “ locations ” are often quite misleading and can even be
completely meaningless.
No one can deny the fact that a priest has his own special
difficulties, both in his spiritual life and in his mental prayer—
difficulties that are generally much greater than those of
religious. The religious life is sheltered ; it is designed to lead
to perfection, and even its smallest details are directed by
obedience. The religious knows at each moment what God’s
will is for him, and the doing of that will is the mainstay
of his spiritual life and the foundation of his prayer. The
priest on the mission has not that detailed knowledge of
God’s plan in his regard—but he has God’s Holy Spirit, and
he must live by Him. Attention and fidelity to the inspirations
of the Holy Ghost and to the obedience of charity may
replace for him the obedience of the religious state. In fact,
one might say that devotion to the Holy Ghost should be
one of the main features of the priest’s spiritual life. The
Holy Ghost was given to him in ordination for all the needs
of his priesthood. Personal sanctity and prayer are among
those needs. Our Lord has made all fruitfulness depend upon
our “ abiding ” in Him ; the Holy Ghost is the principle of
such a union.
This partnership with Our Lord is also a feature which
should characterize the life of a priest. The priest’s union
with Our Lord is so close that he consecrates and absolves
in the first person: “This is ny body; 1 absolve thee . . .”
A true conviction of his own powerlessness and his constant
need of help will soon lead him to a vivid sense of
partnership with Jesus. This will be fostered by recollection
and by frequent aspirations to his Divine Saviour Who is the

THE PRAYER ΟΓ THE PRIEST

6g

source of all his strength and confidence. One way of giving
expression to this partnership in prayer is by frequent use of
verses from the Psalms of the breviary as aspirations in private
prayer. Such words are an inspired expression of prayer, and
can be uttered in the name of Christ and of His Church.
They will often be of help at mental prayer, for they can also
express our own needs. The Psalms are full of petitions for
mercy, cries of confidence in God, and praise for His goodness
that should come so fittingly from our lips. Who is there
for example, that cannot apply to himself the words of the
De profundis?
Much more could be written on the possibilities of building
the spiritual life of the priest on a constant partnership with
Jesus, but enough has been said to make it clear that there
is no reason why clerical readers should not apply to
themselves without reserve all that is here written of progress
in prayer and in perfection. They have their own difficulties,
but have not they a better right than anyone else to make
their own the confident words of St. Paul: “ Gladly therefore
will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
dwell in me”? (Il Cor. xii. 9.)

Chapter XIV

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT OF ADOPTION

UR discussion of prayer has led us into a consideration
of other parts of the spiritual life. This is not a vain
digression, for prayer is the flower which grows on
the tree of the whole of a man’s life ; to ensure its soundness
we must look to the whole plant, and to every part of it.
That is why we must now go on to consider the spiritual
life in general, and to examine it from a point of view that
may help us to pray.
The end of all prayer is union with God. It might also
be said that union with God is the beginning of all prayer,
just as it is the beginning of the spiritual life. The wonderful
effects of Baptism, which is the initiation into the life of
the spirit, are too often unknown or forgotten. That is a
tremendous loss, for it is by this Sacrament that we are made
children of God in truth as well as in name. In Baptism it
is not a mere extrinsic adoption which has no inner effect
on us that takes place, but there is a real intrinsic change
produced in our soul by which we are made partakers in the
divine nature, especially in the divine sonship, so that we
can truly call God Our Father. More than that: in Baptism
God comes to dwell in our hearts really and truly, in a manner
quite different from that in which He is present in the rest
of creation. He takes up His abode in us in such a way
that we can know Him and love Him in an entirely new
and wonderful manner.
In Our Lord’s own instructions on prayer He insisted on our
addressing God as a Father ..." pray to your Father . . .
the Father knoweth you have need of these things . . . thus

O

7°

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT OF ADOPTION

7*

shall you pray—‘ Our Father
If we but remember that
as long as we are in the state of grace, there is that in us
which makes us sons of God, sons in reality, not merely in
name,—if we remember also that God is a Father to whose
goodness, to whose “ Fatherliness ”, there is no limit, our
confidence at prayer will have a sure and solid foundation.
Our mere attitude on our knees or in any posture of prayer
before God becomes a prayer in itself; our needs, our
weakness, our failures, our infidelities, even our sins, become
our most eloquent entreaty to His Fatherly compassion and
can draw down on us His infinite mercy. God will not
turn away from a contrite heart, and a troubled spirit is not
merely a prayer—it is a sacrifice in His eyes. This reliance
on our sonship finds fresh foundation when we realise that
our needs cry out to God, not merely as our own, but as
those of Christ; for, as we shall shortly see, such is the
union of Christ with our soul, that in these things He forms,
as it were, one person with us in the eyes of His Father.
There is no need to recount all the texts of Sacred
Scripture that support this confidence; Our Lord’s own
parable of the Prodigal Son is more than sufficient, for it
shows clearly how far one can press this claim of sonship.
Even if we have wasted all our substance in riotous living,
we can still arise and go to Our Father, admitting before Him
that we have sinned; and if Our Lord’s parable means
anything, it must mean that we can be absolutely certain
that the Father will come to meet us, even when we are
afar off—it must mean that our mere coming in and kneeling
down before Our Father against Whom we have sinned, is a
prayer that will move Him to the Heights of His infinite mercy
and goodness. If a burning candle before a plaster statue
can express the prayer of a trusting soul, how much more the
presence of a contrite sinner at the feet of his heavenly
l ather, especially if distraction and dryness rob him of all
sight and feeling of that Father’s goodness, so that he can

Ί*

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

find nothing to rely on except the unfelt hope of a grim act
of faith!
St. Paul throws more light on this wonderful gift of
sonship, for he assures us that it is conjoined with the presence
of the Holy Ghost Himself in our souls. Not only does the
Holy Spirit give testimony that we are the sons of God, but
since without Him we cannot as much as say even the name of
Jesus meritoriously, Fie prays within us and for us with an
ineffable prayer—the prayer of God Himself. This profound
doctrine of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the souls of
those who are in the state of grace, and of His co-operation
with their actions, is far from being realised by even educated
Catholics. But when we consider all His functions in our
soul we are astounded, for it would seem that He is therç
as our possession and for our use!
Fruitful as further consideration of this wonder for our
spiritual life would be, one cannot here do more than note
its connection with prayer. About this, St. Paul is quite
explicit. In the Epistle to the Romans he writes: “ Likewise
the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not
what we should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit Himself
asketh for us with unspeakable groanings. And He that
searcheth the hearts, knoweth what the Spirit desireth;
because he asketh for the saints according to God.” If, then,
the Holy Ghost assists our infirmity, should we not glory
in our infirmities so that the prayer of the Spirit may rise
unimpeded from the hidden depths of our souls? Why
should we despair at the coldness of our hearts and the
failure of our words, when we have within us the very Person
of God Who is Himself the love of the Father and the Son,
by Whom we cry “ Abba—Father! ”? It is clear, then, that
it is no mere empty figure of speech to say that our very
presence before God—however helpless we feel, however
speechless we are—can in itself be a prayer that touches the
heart of God, just as a child can touch its parent’s heart by

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT OF ADOPTION

73

its very helplessness and misery without needing to utter a
single word.
These considerations should give us confidence in prayer,
no matter at what stage of the spiritual life we may be.
In passing, it should be noticed that there is no need to look
for God outside ourselves when we wish to pray. Every
soul in the state of grace has God within him, seeking his
friendship, his confidence, and his love. A mere act of
attention puts us in touch with Him, a mere thought is
sufficient to speak to Him, a mere movement of the heart
gives Him our love. But God has not come into our souls
merely to be inactive there. He comes to help our infirmity,
and when sanctifying grace is poured into our soul by the
Sacraments or in any other way, the Holy Ghost comes to
us to abide with us, and not only gives us the infused virtues
of faith, hope and charity, with the moral virtues as well,
but also endows us with His seven Gifts: wisdom, under­
standing, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and the fear
of the Lord. We may regard all these riches, which are
beyond all valuation, as a new supernatural organism, as it
were, by which we are enabled to live a new life in
accordance with our new nature as sons of God. The whole
of the spiritual life consists in the development and growth
of this new life—the “ new man,” as St. Paul calls it—and
the subjection of all our own nature, the “ old man,” to the
life of the new. This explains the continual internal combat
thatSt. Paul refers to so vividly. The difficulty of this new life
is clear, when we remember that it is a life of faith, not one
of feeling. But that should in no way cause us to hesitate,
even for a moment, before devoting ourselves with our whole
heart to its claims, for, as Our Lord Himself has promised, we
are given another “ paraclete,” that is a “ comforter,” one
who strengthens us, and it is God himself with His omnipotent
power Who thus comes to be our permanent help, our aid,
and our strength. Therefore, no difficulty, real or imaginary,

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

should ever make us hesitate to embrace a life of prayer.
We are never conscious of all the strength at our disposal,
but as each occasion arises, God’s power becomes available
for our use if we but act with faith, with confidence, and
with humility.
Above all, the absolute and essential necessity of humility
for progress in prayer should be emphasized. God made
the world for Elis own glory, and He will not give His glory
to another. Now in this life He glorifies Himself by the
works of His mercy, by taking compassion on our infirmity,
by raising us up out of the dust to share in His own nature,
in His own strength and in His own joy. All the works of
our supernatural life come from Him. Even the fact that they
belong to us in such a way that we can merit by them is due
entirely to His gracious mercy. If, therefore, we glory in
anything else but our infirmities, we take to ourselves
something to which we have not the slightest claim,
something which belongs entirely to God, for He it is Who
worketh in us both to will and to accomplish. Our pride
robs God of the credit for His work—work that in His
goodness He performed in such a way as to be available for
our merit—for we have nothing which we have not received,
not even our merits.
God is more interested in our salvation and our progress
than we ourselves are. He is our Father and is always so,
actively. That is to say that He will sanctify us and unite us to
Himself, as long as we put no obstacle in His way. Now,
the greatest of all obstacles is our pride, for by it we turn
His saving action on us against His purpose in creating and
ruling the world, which purpose is His own glory. Thus
we make ourselves enemies of God, and therefore it is
written: “God resisteth the proud and to the humble He
giveth His grace.” St. Benedict’s rule is of great significance
in this connection. Writing a rule for a contemplative order,
in which men of prayer were to be formed, the holy Patriarch

THE INDWELLING SPIRIT OF ADOPTION

75

has only a few short words to say of prayer, nor does he treat
of the rest of the spiritual life at any greater length until he
comes to write of humility. On that subject he is eloquent
and insistent, ascribing to it the properties of a ladder by
which one can reach the heights of the spiritual life ; and
St. Thomas Aquinas follows his example, giving first place
to humility in the removal of the obstacles to God’s action
on the soul.
■ Here one can do little more than merely mention these
tremendous truths of the inhabitation of God in our souls.
To treat them adequately would need a whole book. To do
less would be to run the risk not merely of misrepresentation,
but of caricature. The reader himself must seek their
development elsewhere. The Epistles of St. Paul are replete
with this doctrine; it is fundamental in his teaching. A very
fine and readable summary of this subject, and of the closelyrelated one which is the subject of the next chapter, will be
found in the opening part of Tanqucrey’s The Spiritual Life.
This work, which has been translated into English, is a mine
of information on every part of the spiritual life, and should
be in the library of every religious house, even of those
who have not been trained in theology. It is the outstanding
work of reference on the spiritual life. A smaller work by
Fr. Plus, S.J., God Within Us, will be of great help. The
next chapter will indicate other sources of information.
The use of this doctrine of the presence of God within us
as a basis of prayer finds support in the teaching of St. Teresa.
In one place she tells us that the soul has no need to seek
God outside itself to pray to Him. He is within, and may
be addressed with all the simplicity of a child speaking to
its father. We should tell Him our needs and our troubles
and beg Him to remedy them all. The Saint appears to
consider this to be one of the best ways of ensuring rapid
progress in prayer.
In another place she insists on the advantages of forming a

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

lively conviction of the close presence of God. She tells us
that she herself did all she could to remember and realize
continuously the presence of Our Lord within her. If she
was meditating on a mystery, she represented it to herself
within, and addressed all her “ affections ” or acts to her
Divine Guest. This way of remembering God can be very
profitably joined to the manner of praying known as the
second method of St. Ignatius. This is done by reading or
reciting some prayer very slowly, pausing after each word
or phrase to grasp its meaning in our mind, to excite its
reality in our heart, to develop it in variations or to insist
on it in silent assent, according to our inclination, and to do
all this addressing ourselves to Our Lord and our Master,
our Guest and our Saviour, our Lover and our God, Who is
within us. Such a way of praying to God in our hearts can
be employed with great profit at the Rosary, or at the Divine
Office.
Nor are words necessary. We may be content with paying
silent attention to our Guest, confident that Fie sees and
accepts the love and worship that is in our heart. The two
essential features to be attended to are the interior reference
of our prayer and its unforced utterance; we should never
forget St. Teresa’s statement that “ Mental prayer is nothing
else but an intimate friendship, a frequent converse, heart to
heart, with Him Whom we know to be our Lover.”

Chapter XV

OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH JESUS
F a man commit a crime or do someone an injury, his
friends can, of course, do a lot to help him. They can
repair the injury he has done; they can appease the
anger of the person injured; they can help the "man himself
to do both of these things; they can encourage him and
plead for mercy for him. But they cannot, in strict justice,
relieve him of liability to punishment by undergoing the
punishment themselves, nor can they wipe out the stain of
his guilt. Guilt, punishment, and merit, are personal things ;
they cannot be dealt with vicariously. In the strict sense,
no man can take another’s guilt on himself; no man can merit
or be justly punished for another. How then did Our Lord
save us? How then did He avert the punishment that was
due to us? How did He merit for us? How did He come to
suffer for our sins? The most satisfactory' answer to these
and many similar questions is found in the pages of St. John
and St. Paul. St. John gives us Our Lord’s own words:
“ I am the Vine, you are the branches.” St. Paul insists again
and again: “ You are the Body of Christ.”
To sum up and explain the doctrine so vividly expressed
in these two phrases is no easy task. The truth on which it
rests is so rich, so wonderful, so deep, so unparalleled, that
it must be looked at from many different points of view,
and a synthesis made of the various—almost contradictory__
ideas so obtained, before one comes to a reasonably complete
grasp of its nature. Only a few partial presentations of the
truth can be given here, but they will suffice for our purpose.
In the Incarnation, God the Son, the Second Person of the
77

I

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

Blessed Trinity, united to Himself hypostatically a human
nature, so that Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, was truly God
and truly Man, one person with two natures. That, however,
was not the end of the process of union with the human race.
The words of St. John’s Gospel and of St. Paul’s Epistles
make it clear that Our Saviour wished to enter into a real
but mysterious union with each member of the human
race, and that Fie actually does unite each human being to
Himself at Baptism so as to form with Him, one thing, one
body, one man, one mystical Christ. From certain points
of view we, could almost regard this union as forming one
person, but it must be clearly understood that we do not lose
our individuality in this union. Still, the union is so close
that Christ can suffer in all justice for our sins, and we can
in all justice use His merits as our own. The controversies
with heresy which have taken up such a great part of the work
of theologians in the last few centuries, have tended to draw
attention away from this tremendous doctrine of our incorpor­
ation in Christ; so much so that, to some, this statement
of it may seem too vigorous. The Fathers, however, especially
St. Hilary, St. Cyril, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine,
are far more vehement and vigorous in their utterances.
St. Thomas Aquinas, whose words were measured with the
precision that is the hall-mark of that prince of theologians,
simply asserts that in Baptism the sufferings of Christ are
communicated to the baptised person—who becomes a
member of Christ—in such a way as if he himself had suffered
all that pain. Arid he answers the questions which were put
at the beginning of this chapter concerning the way in which
Christ satisfies for our sins, by stating that lie does so through
the fact that we are the members of Christ and form with
Him one body and even, in this matter, one person; and
that therefore the satisfaction offered by Christ applies to all
the faithful since they are members of Flimself. Fie sums up
the doctrine by saying that the actions of Christ belong not

OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH JESUS

79

only to Himself, but also to all His members, with the very
same relation which the actions of a just man have to the
individual agent. (Cf. Sumina, 111; q. 48, art. 1 and 2.)
Another way of stating the doctrine is to say that we are
“in Christ.” St. Paul uses the phrase one hundred and sixtyfour times; and it must certainly be taken as more than a
mere metaphor. The Fathers try to illustrate the relationship
by comparing it to the union of a drop of water with the
wine into which it has fallen. They say, too, that we are
in Christ and filled with Him, just as a glowing iron or coal
put into the fire, is in the fire and is part of it. Our Lord’s
own example of the vine shows our position even more
clearly, for just as the vital sap flows from the vine into its
branches, so He sends His Spirit into our souls and we are
vivified and divinised—the word is not too strong—by grace,
which is a participation in His nature.
There is still another way of regarding this wonderful work
of divine love. We can truly say, as St. Paul does say,
that Jesus Christ is in qs. He abides in our souls as long as
we are in the state of grace, and, as far as we allow Him,
shares our every action. This aspect of the doctrine has been
very well treated in the little work by Fr. de Jaegher, S.J.,
to which reference has already been made, and which has
appeared in English under the title One With Jesus. This
little book, hardly more than a pamphlet, will open up for
many readers a rich mine of undreamt-of possibilities.
It should be familiar to every soul who takes the spiritual
life at all seriously. In it we can see how Jesus lives in
our hearts—how we can pray to Him there, and pray with
Him there; in it we can read a glowing account of the
burning desire in the Heart of Jesus to share our every
thought and deed, to give each one of us a share of His own
life and merits and love. The book itself must be. read, but
the mere idea here given of it is sufficient indication of what
possibilities it opens up for prayer.

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

The results of this doctrine of our incorporation—ou>
identification, if we may use the word—with Christ, which
we have indicated in merest outline, are wide and farreaching. Our Lord’s injunction to pray in His name takes
on a new significance. We can remind the Heavenly Father
of His Son’s promise that whatsoever would be done to the
least of His brethren would be done to Himself, and we cab
put our own needs before the Father as those of Christ Himself,
in all truth and all reality. We can ask for every necessary or
helpful grace for ourselves as for Christ Himself, because it is
for the purpose of developing His Life in us that we need
it. More than that: we know that Jesus Himself asks for
us and with us. That is why we can take Our Lord’s
words quite literally when Fie says: “ Amen, amen, I say to
you: if you ask the Father anything in My Name He will
give it to you.” Behold, then, the ground of the absolute
confidence with which we must go to the throne of grace.
No sin, no shame, should ever make us hesitate to approach
God in prayer.
If Jesus thus takes our part in our prayers and works, we
also take part in Flis. Here we have a principle that can be
of great help when we are “ paralysed ” at prayer. Our
union with Jesus is such that, as long as we do not break it
by a deliberate sinful motion of our will, we may always
lay claim to a share in His merits and in the good works
that He is doing in all the other members of the Church,
for we are all one Body in Christ. We can even share in
His prayer to the Father in heaven. Obviously the extent of
our participation depends on the closeness of our union with
our Head. The most perfect union is that of the will, and
when we are doing the will of God for the love of God, we
are then most closely united to Him. No matter, therefore,
how helpless or how hopeless seem our attempts at prayer,
if we but do His will, if we put ourselves on our knees at His
command, we can count on a great share in His prayer, for

OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH JESUS

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He is living at the right hand of God, always making
intercession for us.
Prayer is a work of partnership between Jesus and each one
of us. Our part in the partnership lies in doing His will and
conforming ourselves to it, and the limitations of our efforts
are part of that will. If we carry out our part, we can claim
the whole fruit of our joint efforts. If in particular we go
to prayer, resigned to God’s will and to our own helplessness,
we need not be discouraged at our apparent lack of success;
Our Lord is our “ Supplement ” in all these things, and
supplies for all that we are not able to do. Moreover, our
powerlessness is part of His plan to make us rely on Him.
It thus appears that, as regards prayer, our union with
Christ is of more importance than our fluency or our feeling
of fervour, and matters more than our freedom from
distraction. If distractions, therefore, are involuntary, but
are accepted as a trial permitted by God for His own wise
ends, then, in so far as they unite us to Christ by suffering
in accordance with the will of God, they are a help rather
than otherwise to our prayer. Actually, if a soul goes to
prayer in order to give itself to God, with its mind made up
to attend to God and to nothing else as far as it can do so,
and is resigned to whatever trials or aridity or distraction
that Providence permits, its prayer, even though it seems to
be a complete failure and almost waste of time, is nevertheless
a most pleasing holocaust in God’s sight, which will bring
down many graces upon the soul and advance it much
towards union with God.
It further follows that every action of the day, no matter
how “active,” if done according to God’s will, is done in
union with Christ, and is not only a prayer in itself, but is
an excellent starting-point either for one of those wordless
colloquies or for a more articulate conversation with Jesus
which can make our whole day a time of prayer. It is impossible
to work in such close companionship with Jesus and not

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

pray to Him. On the other hand, of course, if our actions
are not in accordance with His will, His company is rather
an embarrassment, and thus self-will kills a life of prayer.
The continuous and intimate presence of Jesus in our
hearts means that no place or occupation is an obstacle to
prayer. We are not compelled to go outside ourself to find
the God to Whom we wish to speak. We are not compelled
to hide our working clothes, so to speak, nor to cease from
our week-day labours, before we put ourselves in His presence.
Not only is He already present wherever we may be, but He
is actually sharing our work—so that our work is rather a
means of prayer than an obstacle to it. This does not mean
that there is no need for some period of the day when we
can leave everything else aside to recollect all our powers
and turn them to Him. It means rather that there is a prayer
for all times—that the hearts seeking God can pray to Him
now by words, now by works, now by silence, now by speech.
Not only is Christ to be found in ourselves, He may also
be found and served and prayed to in our neighbour.
Everything we do for our neighbour is done to Jesus. Once
we understand that prayer can be most informal, we can
easily see how any contact with our fellow-men can be turned
into prayer to Jesus. Further, it is significant that before
Our Lord made such extraordinary promises about the
efficacy of prayer, He laid down the new commandment of
mutual charity, and illustrated it by washing the feet of His
disciples. Therefore we may conclude that we cannot pray
in union with Flim unless we are united to our fellow-men by
charity. He even insisted that before offering sacrifice we
should go and be reconciled to our brother whom we have
offended.
Thus, all that we do in word or in work can be a prayer.
The very food we eat is given to Jesus, for what we do to
ourselves we do to Him. Even our pleasures can be His
delight. We cannot take a walk that He does not share and

OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH JESUS

S3

enjoy; there is no part of our life, whether it be work or
play, in which Fie does not join, as long, of course, as it is
according to the will of the Father.
Thus, the soul in the state of grace can in a way imitate
the priest at Mass, who at the end of the Canon holds up
the Chalice and the Host, and prays to the Father through
Christ, saying: “Through Him, and with Him, and in Him,
is to Thee, God the Father Almighty, in the unity of the
Holy Ghost, all honour and glory.” In this way, by showing
forth Christ in our lives through doing the will of God, we
sing the new canticle of honour and glory, which is Christ
Himself.

6

Chapter XVI

THE GROWTH OF JESUS WITHIN US

N the last chapter were set forth some different aspects of
the wonderful mystery of our incorporation in Christ.
It is left to the reader to choose that which attracts him
and to develop it by reading and reflection, by prayer and
by practice. Some further consideration of the subject may
be of help. We saw that Jesus comes into our souls at
Baptism, there to dwell in a loving and living union with us.
It is also true to say that He grows in our soul. The extent
to which He participates in all our life depends greatly on
our will. He does not take away our freedom; we can live
our own life if we wish. If we do so to such an extent as to
commit mortal sin, we banish Him from our soul. But even
those actions which, without being seriously sinful, are yet not
in full accord with His will, reject Him from as much of our
life as they include. Therefore, we can speak of the growth
and of the formation of Christ in us, according as more and
more of ourself and of our activities are subjected and handed
over to Him. Obviously, one single deliberate habit of
infidelity spoils the sense of companionship with Jesus, and
thus prevents prayer. We cannot take only a part of out­
lives and give it to Him, and, having forgotten Him, or even
put Him aside, for the rest of the day, expect then to face
Him without difficulty or embarrassment when we do decide
to advert to His presence. Despite His clemency and His
patient kindness there will be awkward pauses in the con­
versation; certain subjects must be avoided ; protestations
of devotion which hardly harmonise with our neglect and

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8ç

rejection, will sound hollow, and will even die away on our
lips. At times we will talk wildly and hastily in order to rush
over some unfortunate memory, and since we have made up
our mind that on certain points we will not give Him what we
know He wants, wc cannot catch His eye or look in His face
with that quiet smile of complete surrender that comes from
a heart ready to give Him all that He asks for, and which is
perfect prayer. That is the great difficulty in prayer. We
want to meet God on our own terms; wc want to make a
compromise; we want to work with Him at certain times
and in certain ways, but, to put it crudely, we want to be
rid of Him in other circumstances. That is just the trouble.
One cannot get rid of Our Lord for a time. He is there all
the time, and one either treats Him as a permanent friend,
or else one has a “ difficulty ” in prayer.
Further, even though we do try’ to give Him a place in our
company at all times, we may try to forget that He is a
crucified God; that He never did His own will; that He
always denied Himself; that He delivered Himself; that He
emptied Himself, becoming obedient unto the death of the
cross. We should like to have Him, but we do not want to
share all His ideals, to follow all His ways, and thus again
we find prayer “ difficult.” No wonderl For if prayer be
essentially an awareness of God, all that makes us unwilling
to be aware of Him is an obstacle to prayer. There lies one
of the roots of the connection between mortification and
prayer. Unless we are at least willing that He should teach
us His ways, even the way of the cross, we cannot meet Him
in prayer with that feeling of open, frank, and unreserved
loyalty which is so essential to friendship.
It must be clearly understood that it is the habitual and
deliberate opposition to the desires of Jesus that is such a
serious obstacle to prayer. No matter how often or how
far we fall, Jesus is always ready to renew our union, as soon
as we are again determined to give up our own way. In fact,

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

as we have seen, there is a type of love and understanding that
is born of forgiven sin that has something unique and special in
its flavour, and which Ins a special place in God’s plan. Past
sins, past failures, need never come between us and Him;
provided we are truly contrite, they only make a new bond.
So also, fears for the future, and that lack of full goodwill
that comes from human weakness and timidity, need never
be anything but a new claim on the help of Him Who came
to heal the sick and to save sinners. His official position in
our soul is that of an omnipotent Saviour; all that needs
saving is a claim on Him, and only those who have learned
to glory in their infirmities know to the full how intimate a
union of prayer and work with Jesus can be built on their
own weakness, on their own failures, and even on their
past sins.
This is also true of our sharing in His cross. He knows well
our horror of penance; He understands perfectly our dislike
of suffering; nay, more, He sympathises with us in these
difficulties. True, Fie wishes us to help Him to carry His
cross, but He also wishes to help us to do so. So sweet
is His aid, so enthralling His companionship, that St. Teresa
found that it was only the first of her crosses that was really
hard ; once she had embraced the nettle of her cross she found
herself in close union with Jesus. There is no joy in this life
to equal that of sharing the cross with Jesus. It needs courage,
it needs grace, it needs perhaps a special call ; but the truth is
that this path of suffering and of penance—penance, be it
well understood, undertaken or accepted according to God’s
will and not our own—is the road of highest joy, and the
sure path to the heights of prayer.
The importance of mortification is not so much that it
hurts us, but that it gives Jesus a new life in us; we only
put ourselves to death—that is what “ mortification ” means—
in order to clear the way for Christ. That is at once the
motive of mortification and its measure. If it only serves to

THE GROWTH OF JESUS WITHIN US

87

make us more self-satisfied and proud, then it is no longer
mortification of self; it is rather the mortification of Jesus.
The true principle of mortification was laid down by St. John
the Baptist when he said: “ He must increase, I must
decrease.”
Perhaps a somewhat far-fetched comparison may help to
put this process in its true light. The bread and wine that
are changed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord at Mass
once graced the earth in a glory of purple and gold; they
were cut down, beaten and bruised, ground and pressed out
of all recognition. Not until many changes had been made
in them could the priest say over them the words that would
make them the Flesh and Blood of Christ. Now, in so far
as the Mass is a changing of bread and wine into the Body
and Blood of Jesus—it is, of course, much more than that—■
it might be said that Our Lord says Mass with us and our
lives as the bread and wine, but it is a Mass in which the
grinding of the wheat and the pressing of the grape, the
baking of the bread and the maturing of the wine, the offering
of the Host and the oblation of the Cljalice, the consecration
of both and their conversion into the living Body and Blood
of Christ, arc all going on at the same time. Every time
that we deny ourselves in any way and to that extent offer
ourselves to Jesus, He comes and takes possession of us to that
same extent, and says: “This is My Body.” More than that:
He takes compassion on our cowardice, and sends us trials and
humiliations that grind us and press us and make us into
suitable bread and Wine to become part of Himself. “ My
meat,” He said, “ is to do the will of Him that sent Me.”
So it is that everything done in accordance with the Divine
will gives new life to Jesus in our souls, for He feeds on the
doing of His Father’s will. Every action we do, every
suffering we undergo, whatever it be, as long as it is
according to the will of God, is an act of communion with
Jesus, an act that is no mere desire, but a positive advance

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

in our union with Him; it gives Him new matter over which
Lie can pronounce the saving words : “ This is My Body.”
The significance of such a concept for a life of prayer is
obvious. Prayer is no longer a matter of some few minutes
spent on our knees, struggling to find something to say.
It becomes a more or less continual awareness of Jesus living
in us, of Jesus growing in us, of Jesus moulding us by His
providence to His Heart’s desire; our co-operation, our
companionship, our submission, our smile of surrender as we
continually give up our own way in order to let Him have
His way—all these are our prayer. Mortification, instead of
meaning doing hurt to ourselves, comes to mean giving
pleasure, giving even life, to Jesus. Every action of the day
is intimately concerned with Him.
The practice of Christian charity is thus put in a stronger
light, for if Jesus lives in our neighbour, and is making our
neighbour’s life His own, it becomes much easier to realise
what He meant when He told us: “ As often as you did it
to the least of these, My brethren, you did it to Me.” To
turn our dealings with our fellow-men into prayer, we have
no need of words. It is sufficient to remember that “ we are
doing it to Him,” and our heart will pray by its secret
movement of love. The practice of one of the greatest men
of prayer and of action that the world has seen—one who
comes very close to St. Paul—is full of meaning in this
matter. St. Patrick’s mind is given to us in his famous
“ Breastplate,” that wonderful prayer, full of the spirit of
St. Paul, full of the spirit of Christ Himself. “ Christ before
me,” he prays, “ Christ behind me, Christ about me, Christ
be this day within and without me, Christ the lowly and meek,
Christ the all-powerful be in the heart of each one to whom
I speak—in the mouth of each who speaks to me, in all who
draw near me, or see or hear me.” He tells us of how he
heard tire words: “ He Who laid down His life for thee—
He it is that prayeth in thee.” On another occasion he

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89

writes: “ I saw Him praying in me,” and on being told that
it was the Spirit who prayeth within him, he recalls St. Paul’s
promise that the Holy Ghost should help the infirmities of our
prayer. We have here the secret of St. Patrick’s prayer,
the secret of his interior life and, in fact, the secret of the
monumental success of his active life—union with God in his
own soul, and the service of God in the soul of his neighbour
There is no Christian who cannot imitate that example.

r

Chapter XVII

EMMANUEL—“ GOD WITH US”
HE example of St. Patrick and the insight that the few
words just quoted from his writings give us into his
heart, show us the secret of the wonderful way in which
many of the saints were able to unite a life of prayer with a
life of almost continual action. All our activity can be
reduced either to the service of Christ in our neighbour, or to
the extending of His life in ourselves. It will have been noted
that the border-line between prayer, in the usual association
of the term, and the rest of one’s activities, is gradually
being removed as we progress in the consideration of the
spiritual life. And that is as it should be, for Our Lord
Himself told us that we ought always to pray. But it must
not be concluded from this that there is no need of some
time during the day in which we are to devote our undivided
attention to prayer. For, as we have seen, although all our
acts can be prayer, they will not be so, unless there are some
acts which are nothing else. That is to say: human nature is
such, that if the interior life is not fed by reflection and by
pure prayer, it will gradually succumb to the lure of natural
activity that will soon take complete charge of our actions.
In fact, even under the most favourable conditions, the habitual
remembrance of Our Lord can only be developed after
repeated failures. But once it has been achieved, even to a
somewhat limited extent, the whole spiritual life undergoes
a remarkable transformation. In many ways it becomes
easier and more attractive.
The thought of mortification and war on self fills many
souls with fear, and causes them to turn back and give up
90

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EMMANUEL—" GOD W1TI1 US "

91

the hope of further progress. This is quite understandable,
but it is also quite foolish, for Our Lord Himself has said
that His yoke is easy and His burden light. Mortification is
like some of those old houses on the Continent, which are
grim and forbidding barrack-like structures from the outside,
but contain inside a courtyard filled with all the glamour of
a southern garden, echoing with the music of falling fountains,
and fragrant with the rich odour of flowers. We have looked
through those grim gates and have seen that what seems to be
the living death of mortification is in reality the growth of
Jesus in our soul, filling us with the warmth of His smile,
the melody of His companionship, and the glow of His love.
For by dying to ourselves we have given Him a new measure
of life.
In considering this mystery of the life and growth of Jesus
in our souls and our incorporation in Him, we have looked
at it from a number of different points of view. It can be
regarded as the indwelling in our soul of the Holy Ghost,
Who, somewhat after the fashion of the soul in the human
body which makes one thing, one body, one person of many
members, makes all of us into one thing, one Body, and
even as we may say in a real but limited sense, one Person—
one Christ. Or we can regard this mystery as our own
incorporation into Christ after the manner of a grafting
of a branch on to a new stem; we have Our Lord’s own
authority for claiming that we ourselves are branches of
the Vine that He identified with Himself. Then, too, we
can look upon the mystery as the dwelling in our soul of Jesus
Himself in a wonderful union of saving co-operation and
living love; for this we have the authority of His own
promises. At first sight we may think that we have thus
involved ourselves in a contradiction through making use of
all these different views; but that is only because the
richness of this mystery, which involves a reality without
any parallel in the whole of creation, is such as to demand

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difficulties in mental prayer

many different analogies for its expression. Despite this
difficulty, and despite the frequent use of the word “ mystical ”
to describe it, we must never doubt its reality. It is the
greatest of all realities outside God: it is our only hope, it
is the plan of God, Who wills to restore all things “ in
Christ.”
At the risk of adding to the confusion which this manifold
exposition may seem to involve, it would be well to indicate
another way of regarding the mystery, because it may be of
help to some souls in their prayer. Our Lord, taking a
human body in the womb of His Mother Mary, became man,
lived His own human life for our salvation, and died and rose
again for that same end. Not that that was His sole end,
for the glory of the Father must have come before all else.
But He wished to glorify His Father’s mercy by saving us.
Now, this process did not end with the Resurrection. Risen
from the dead, He continues His life in each one of us. We
might look upon the whole stretch of our existence as if it
were a body,—a body without animation, for without Christ
it is supernaturally dead—a body into which Christ is
gradually being born, according as through the operations of
grace and the co-operation of our own will, we gradually
submit more and more of our actions to Him.
This concept has to some extent the authority of St. Paul,
who tells the Galatians that He is “ in labour ” until Christ
be formed in them. We, too, are “ in labour ” till Christ
be formed in ourselves. This is a view that it is important
not to overlook. But it is still more important to attend to
the significance of Our Lord’s words to His Mother and to
St. John as He poured out the last drops of His life-blood on
the Cross at Calvary: “ Behold thy son—Behold thy Mother.”
St. John there stood for the whole human race. Mary is
thus shown to be the Mother of each of us, being given, as it
were, the life of the dying Christ that She might transmit it
to us. A certain measure of caution is here necessary to prevent

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93

too close a degree of identification between the life of Jesus
in His own Flesh and that which He lives in us. Still, the
Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius X, Ad diem ilium, published on
2nd February, 1904, shows us that we can carry this notion
of the maternity of Mary in reference to ourselves very far,
without departing from his teaching or making any innovation,
for the Holy Father quotes the very words of St. Augustine in
support of this doctrine. The Pope asserts not only that it
was in Mary that Christ took to Himself flesh, but also
that in Mary He united to Himself the spiritual body formed
by those who are to believe in Him.
Here, then, is a view that may give Our Lady a new
importance in our spiritual life and a new significance for our
prayer. She is not only the Mother of Christ, but She is
also really and actively mother to each of us who believe in
Him. She was instrumental in uniting the human nature of
Christ to the Word; She is also instrumental in uniting each
of us to Christ—for we are His Body. Mary is continually
co-operating in the formation of Christ in us, so much so
that we could say that He is continually being born in us of
Her. Every time we submit any part of our life to God by
doing His will in the way in which He wills, She brings
forth in our soul a new measure of the fullness of Christ,
and we co-operate in Her maternity.
Thus the spiritual life is not only lived in union with the
Blessed Trinity, but it is also an active union with Mary.
Here it may be noted that all that has been said in an earlier
chapter on the value of the familiar friendship with Jesus as
a way of developing a life of prayer, also applies, mutatis
mutandis, to a filial familiarity with Mary. Nor need it be
thought that to seek God by recourse to Mary is to lose time
by following a roundabout path. Not only is there no time
lost, but it would seem that to go to Him through Mary is
not only the shorter but also the surer way. She is the
way chosen by God to come to us ; by Her intercession She

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

can do all that God can do by His power; She is only too
glad to use every opportunity of doing something more for
Her Child Jesus, and She knows better than anyone else how
true it is, that all that is done to the least of us is done to
Him. These considerations may encourage those souls who
find themselves more at their ease in talking to Mary than
in any other way of praying. They may rest assured that
She will leave nothing undone to unite them to Jesus, nor
will the attention they pay to Her derogate in the slightest
from that due to Fier Son. It is, of course, true that Mary
is not present within us in the same way as is Her Son, but
Iler function as Mother, both in our regard and in that of
Christ, ensures that Her hand is always near and able to
help us. Her ears are quick to hear us, and Her eyes never
lose sight of us. Our prayers need no words to carry them
to Fier ears; the mere smile of our heart, the sigh of our
soul, are seen by Her immediately, and there need be no
delay before She is come to our help. She is the Refuge of
sinners, the Comforter of the afflicted ; She is the Mother
of Perpetual Succour, the Mother of Divine Grace; She is
the Mother of Christ and of us all. There is no one who
need be afraid to speak to Her of his needs, there is n<f one
whose needs are beyond Her powers, there is no one whose
sins will turn Her away from him. There is no work, save
that of sin, that may not be done under Her eyes, and the
true picture of the spiritual life lived in union with Mary,
is that of a child at work or at play, secure in the consciousness
of his mother seated within call, always ready to take an
interest in his doings and ne\cr unable to help.

Chapter XVIII

ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

N the last few chapters an attempt was macle to sketch in
the merest outline some of the wonders which God has
wrought in the soul of every Christian. To treat the
subject properly, even were it only in its relation to a life
of prayer, would require many long chapters. It must here
suffice to point out the rich mine that the subject forms,
and hope that the reader will seek elsewhere for its develop­
ment. The Epistles of St. Paul are, of course, a primary
source. The many fine works that have appeared in recent
times on the Mystical Body of Christ will throw much new
light on the question. The works of Mura, of Anger, of
Mersch, of Sheen, are already classics on this subject. The
works of Fr. de Jaegher, of Fr. Plus, of Fr. Duperray, are
only some of the many smaller books which apply the doctrine
to the spiritual life. Dom Marmion’s writings have already
made an everlasting place for themselves in spiritual
literature. There is no need to develop the theme here
any further.
To sum up, then: In Baptism Christ makes each of us a
member of Himself; He gives us His Father by making us
sons of God ; He gives us His Mother, as we have just seen,
to be our Mother also. He gives us His own Spirit to vivify
us with the newness and fullness of life. Fie gives us His
own life, in so far as He died for us and rose again for us
and comes to live His life in us. Fie gives us His merits,
for we can truly call them our own. He gives us His
innocence, for He has taken our sins upon Himself. He
gives us His Flesh and Blood for our nourishment that we
9i

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

may live by Him. He gives us Himself, uniting us to Himself,
in such a way that, without losing our own personality, we
“ put on Christ,” and can live and act and pray in His Name
as indeed He lives and acts and prays in our name. So close
is the union, so time-defying, that every sin we commit adds
to His Passion—every cross we patiently bear lightens His
own. Our love comforts Him in the Garden, just as our
neglect or disloyalty makes Him suffer even to the sweating
of Blood. So complete is this union that each of us can say
in the words of St. Paul: “ And 1 live, now not I : but
Christ liveth in me.”
It must be remembered that these truths do not apply
merely to a select and mystical few; they are the primary
facts of Christianity, and are true of every baptized person.
Baptism is not merely the removal of original sin, it is also
the infusion of a new life. The chief obstacles to this life
in us are the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and
the pride of life. Now, the three vows that constitute the
religious state, those of poverty, chastity and obedience, are
directly aimed at destroying these obstacles and in making
full room for Christ in our lives, or rather for His life in us.
What religious then can say that holiness is not for him?
What right has any religious to maintain that he is not called
to a life of prayer? How can a religious believe that God
does not intend him to go beyond the very first step of the
ladder of prayer? And even if special graces are necessary
for the heights of prayer, how can a religious, who by his
state is already bound to all that he needs do to prepare
himself for these graces—to whom God has already given
Himself, His Son, and His Spirit—how can he refuse to hope
that God will give him all that is necessary to live a life of
union with His Son? If we have received so much from God,
why may we not hope for what—in comparison at least—is
only a little more, especially when we have already received
the right to ask in the name of His Son? The very question

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suggests its own answer, for the only reason for fearing a
refusal is that we are not really asking in the name of Jesus.
If, however, we are living in the name of Jesus, if, at least,
we are doing our best to do so, if we are come so far as to
want Him to live in us still more and more, and if we see
that these graces of prayer are the very means to extend His
life in ours, then let us ask in all confidence, nothing doubting.
Before we go on to consider further progress in prayer,
let us look back for a moment on the road we are travelling.
In the beginning, if by education and environment we had
not already been familiarised with the convictions of faith,
we prayed by “ meditation.” That is, we recalled some
truth, and applied our intellect to consider different points
in it, illustrating it by pictures in our imagination; we
deduced certain conclusions, and set our will to work in
resolutions and turned all our faculties to God in a colloquy
or short conversation. These convictions became habitual
as time went on, the idea of God became more familiar
to us; in particular, our imagination had no great difficulty
in forming a very real picture of Our Lord, and we
found that it became more easy to talk to Him, so much
so that when we went to prayer we had no need of long
considerations to find something to say to Him. As the
books say, the affections predominated in our prayer. This
association with Our Lord ripened into friendship, and our
mutual understanding became so great that a few words
sufficed for our conversation,-and sometimes we could even
do without words altogether, and were content to kneel in
silent adoration or wordless desire. Our prayer simplified
itself. Granting the essentially supernatural condition of all
prayer and its consequent dependence on grace, this progress
may be described as a natural one. It is only what may
be expected, if we do not fail to make our life accord with
our friendship with Jesus. Provided we were loyal to Him,
and were careful that our actions were in harmony with His

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ideals and in particular with the requests He made of us,
intimate understanding and silent communion followed quite
naturally. The same conditions are required for human
friendship, and a similar result may be expected when they
are realised.
Still, there were many “ ups-and-downs ” in our progress.
Each falling off in virtue was reflected by a corresponding
failure in prayer. Distractions were always a threat to our
prayer and often almost destroyed it. In some cases, too,
the growth in simplicity was obscured by a constant habit
of vocal prayer, or perhaps by a vigorous devotion to
methodic meditation. This latter, if pressed too far, is by
no means the best way to the heights of prayer, although
it can be a fine foundation; but God is faithful, and His
grace is all-powerful. As the proverb puts it, He can write
straight on crooked lines.
Despite all the trials and the troubles, however, there
were, perhaps, times when we tasted the sweetness of the
friendship of Jesus. There were times when prayer simply
flowed from our lips, when our heart glowed with devotion,
when we felt ready for any sacrifice. We could feel our
prayer. Then, perhaps, this sensible devotion, for such it
was, in part at least, grew less. The mysteries of Jesus failed
to touch us in the same way, the supernatural lost its appeal
for us, and prayer became an arid dreary business of
banishing distractions and having nothing to put in their
place. Our “ devotion ” was dead, and it was hard to know
what to do next. Innate conviction of a world to come kept
us on the straight path, and we plunged into our work with
as much earnestness as we could muster. A life of prayer
was not for us—we were not called to serve God in that
fashion. So perhaps it seemed to some. Were they right?
First of all, this development just sketched could be
merely natural.
It was founded on grace, of course,
but still it might have been no more than what might be

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99

called the “ natural ” working of grace-aided nature. Actually,
although the nature of things would be sufficient explanation,
it does often happen that Our Lord Himself intervenes in
the natural progress, and does so to accelerate and extend
our advance. His way of doing so, however, is what should
be noticed, for, in its later stages at any rate, it runs quite
contrary to what one would expect. In the earlier stages
He frequently does act in a special way to intensify sensible
devotion; He even makes His presence felt, and touches our
hearts so sweetly that, for the moment at any rate, we make
great advances in detachment. But in our reaction to these
favours there is a lot of self-love—“ cupboard love,” as the
old people used to call it—and, in any case, the senses cannot
bring us far on our road to God. True, these favours help
to set us on the road, but they are not real devotion—they
do not supply the motive-power for a long and tedious
journey. Real devotion is in the will, in a determination to
follow Christ, cost us what it may. That is the only sort of
devotion that will keep us advancing on the narrow way that
leads to the Kingdom of God.
Our Lord, therefore, once He has turned our hearts to
Himself, begins to purify our love and our devotion. Sooner
or later He begins to withdraw this sensible devotion, and
our prayer runs “ dry.” We tend to become sullen and
resentful; but if we are generous and try to co-operate with
His grace, we shall soon see that what He wants from us is
complete and generous submission to His will. That is all
that matters, and we must learn to find all our satisfaction
in doing that. That calls for courage; it calls for faith;
it calls for grace. It is as expedient for us that He go away
as it was for the Apostles; otherwise we should continue to
live by our senses rather than by generous faith. Now, the
senses cannot unite us to God in any full meaning of the
word; it is in faith that Our Lord espouses us to Himself,
and until we have learned to live by faith, we are but novices

7

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

in the spiritual life, no matter to what heights of sensible
devotion we have risen. The natural blunting of sense
reaction that comes from familiarity with and repetition of
the same experience—the unconscious realisation, if one may
so speak, of the inadequacy of any feeling or emotion to
satisfy the deeper needs of our soul—these, added to the
workings of God’s purifications, bring us to a new phase of
the spiritual life, where prayer becomes a matter of great
difficulty. Although it is usually in the later stages of the
spiritual ascent that this state is found in long and constant
duration—for it may last for many years—,yet it often occurs
much earlier for shorter* periods, and it is only when we
have estimated it at its proper worth that we can form any
true scale of values of prayer. For such a state, in spite of
its apparent sterility and worthlessness, leads to a prayer of
tremendous value, one most pleasing to God, and most
productive of great virtue and rapid advance for ourselves.
It is a state in which one has to love and pray by faith, and
for that reason the term “ prayer of faith ” is used here to
denote this type of prayer.

Chapter XIX

THE PRAYER OF FAITH

NDER the term “ prayer of faith ” are here included all
those forms of prayer in which neither the senses not
the intellect find much to hold them or attract theit
natural appetites. This prayer centres rather around God as
seen by the dim light of faith, with Flis attractiveness dimmed
and hidden. It is a prayer which seems to consist in an
inability to pray. It is not to our purpose, however, to
narrow down the meaning of the name by trying to define it.
On the contrary, it is better to leave its application as broad
as possible, so as to be able to include in the treatment of
it the permanent difficulties of the more advanced as well as
the temporary paralysis of those who have not yet got so far.
Many readers do not like quotations, but one feels bound
to quote the description given by St. Jane Francis de Chantal
of her prayer, both because it is an excellent, though advanced,
example of the type of prayer that is under discussion, and
also because it may introduce that Saint to some who have
not yet known her. After St. Teresa, she is the great
authority of her sex on prayer. She is, moreover, the living
book that St. Francis de Sales “ wrote,” for he was her
director, and formed her soul on the lines of his now classic
spirituality—a spirituality that has hardly ever been surpassed.
The Saint writes: “I tell you in all confidence and
simplicity that it is about twenty years since God took from
me all power to accomplish anything in prayer with the
understanding and consideration or meditation; and that all
I can do is to suffer and stay my spirit very simply in God,
cleaving to this operation by an entire committal (or
abandonment to God) without making any acts, unless 1
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should be invited thereto by His motion, there awaiting what
it shall please His goodness to give me.” Here we have a
prayer without “ acts,” without ability to do anything except
to suffer and to abandon one’s self to God. It is this latter
point that distinguishes this prayer from mere reveries or
lazy inertness. If one’s life is not being continually moulded
according to God’s will, there can be no real “ abandonment ”
at the time of prayer. The note of suffering is not essential
to this prayer, but all the same, prayer frequently fails
because we do not regard it as a means by which we give
ourselves to God. Too often we are seeking consolations,
seeking ourselves, in fact, even though it be on a spiritual
plane. We are praying in our own name, instead of that of
Jesus Christ.
There are various phases of prayer which can be included
under this title “ prayer of faith.” Sometimes we cannot
conceive that God is anywhere near us. Fie seems to have
abandoned us completely, to be indifferent to our needs.
Nothing we can say or do seems to move Him. At other
times it is our own efforts that seem to be at fault. We
cannot form a single act. Words die on our lips as soon as
they are born; they are completely inadequate. We want
something: what it is we cannot say. We can only, as it
were, whimper or moan. Sometimes an acute consciousness
of our misery kills our prayer, as, for example, when our
protestations of love are choked by the remembrance of our
daily infidelity, of our self-seeking or of our lack of trust.
It may be, perhaps, that we are conscious in some blind
way that God is not far away; He seems to be behind a heavy
thick curtain in complete darkness. But every effort we
make to draw near to Him or to speak to Flim only seems
to put us further away from Flim. It is like a man swimming,
who raises himself up over the water to try and see farther,
only to fall back even lower again. Sometimes we are, so
to speak, in touch with God, but are beset with distractions,

THE PRAYER OF FAITH

>°3

and every effort to get rid of these distractions only serves
to break our contact with God. This is a state, referred to
by St. Teresa, in which no attempt should be made to
banish the distractions. It is somewhat analogous to the case
of a hostess entertaining a visitor on the ground floor while
her children are making noise upstairs. If she goes up to
keep them quiet, she has to leave her visitor. In this
particular phase of prayer, God’s action is confined to the
very depth of the soul, and makes no appeal to the senses
or to the imagination, nor does He offer the intellect anything
of which it can lay hold with case. These powers then start
to work on their own, and any attempt to follow them will
only take the soul away from God.
This, however, is but a particular case. In all these cases
where one is helpless, incurably distracted, paralysed by
dryness, completely unable to get into touch with God,
apparently quite indifferent to all the things of God, even at
times filled with distaste for them, or beset with stupidity,
vacancy of mind, and even temptations—in all such cases
one has to fall back on a “ dry ” act of faith in God, in His
presence, in His power, in His goodness, in His knowledge,
in His infinite mercy, and in His Fatherly love. This state
of prayer consists not so much in one long uninterrupted act
as in an habitual permanent disposition to avoid whatever
displeases God and to perform whatever pleases Him. Be it
noted that this fundamental disposition is quite consistent
with a general feeling of sinfulness and of apparent bad-will.
It only ceases when we become aware of a particular
deliberate determination to persevere in something contrary
to the will of God. This, of course, is the end of our
good-will. But, given this good-will, we can apply to our
prayer the principle found in the prayer of the Church when
she thus addresses God: “ O God, to Whom every hearj
lies open and to Whom we speak with our wills.............. ”
We must, therefore, pray with our wills.

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We pray with our will whenever we go to prayer, in
accordance with God’s will, and put ourselves in a suitable
attitude of body, turning our mind, as far as we can, away
from all else but God, and endeavouring to persevere in that
attitude of mind and body. This is true, no matter how often
we are distracted, no matter how little we say, no matter
how remote from God we feel, no matter how much we
seem to have failed; for, nevertheless, we have been praying
with our will. And that is all that matters. We may have
got absolutely no satisfaction out of such prayer, but God has
been duly honoured, and be it noted, we ourselves, though
we know it not, have been made more holy and more pleasing
to God. If souls could only realise the value of this sort of
prayer, what new courage they would feel! For it is the
idea that al! our time is wasted in such an attempt that makes
us give up prayer when it develops into the sort of state that
we have been trying to describe.
It is in order that they may have a true notion of what
progress in prayer really means that this description is put be­
fore the eyes of all, even those beginning the spiritual life.
The ordinary notion of progress is something quite opposed to
developments of this sort. Yet the ordinary notion is wrong,
for it judges prayer by the self-satisfaction that it affords.
This is a false criterion, for prayer’s purpose is to give God
His due, not to yield us that to which we have no right.
If God is pleased that we should stand before Him like dumb
animals or like a statue, is it not meet and just and right
and fitting that we should do so? But then we shall have
to learn to find our happiness in pleasing God, not in pleasing
ourselves.
In other words, we must make our life “ Christ-centred ”
instead of self-centred. Then we shall be satisfied by the
hope that the dreary minutes we spend in prayer will lighten
llis cross. Very often, if we would but make up our mind
to share His cross, we should re-discover Our Divine Lover,

THE PRAYER OF FAITH

io;

Who seems to have abandoned us. However, that is not
always the case. He may still remain far away, despite outgenerosity in sacrifice, and we shall have to be content to
serve Him at our own expense until He sees fit to come
again to set our heart on fire.
That He will come again if we persevere in prayer is
certain, for this arid stage is but the desert that guards the
approach to the promised land of contemplation. There is
indeed a very close parallel between the progress of the soul
when this paralysis in prayer has become a permanent
condition and the wanderings of the Israelites in the desert.
Despite everything, there is, deep down in the soul, a vague
habitual hunger for something that it may or may not
recognise to be God. Nothing jn creation can give it solid
satisfaction; and even though it may sigh for the joys it
previously knew in the spiritual life, it knows in the depths
of its heart that these can no longer satisfy its needs. It has
left Egypt and its fleshpots; it has not yet reached the
promised land; meanwhile it must learn to content itself
with the daily manna God gives it. Nor will it receive more
than a day’s supply, for God only gives the soul enough grace
to meet the needs of the moment, so that it may learn that
of itself it can do nothing, but that His grace is always
sufficient for it.
When a soul in this condition feels itself moved to kneel
before God, doing nothing, except, in a general way, waiting
for Him, there need be no doubt that it is really praying
and, in fact, that God is preparing it for further graces of
prayer. This state, which is called the dark night of the
senses, is by no means so unusual as many suppose. The
soul in this state is in need of more counsel than can be given
here. There are two small books which treat of this
condition in a very practical way, and which can be
recommended to all souls who are trying to live a life of
prayer. One is On Prayer, by Fr. de Caussadc, S.J. ; the other

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is The Science of Prayer, by Father Ludovic de Bessc,
O.S.F.Cap, (This latter at the moment is, unfortunately,
out of print.) The matter treated in these two books should
be familiar to every priest and religious of five or six years’
standing. Both books treat of the simplified types of prayer and
of die difficulties and doubts that arise from them, and discuss
many other aspects of the spiritual life connected with this
stage of prayer. The reader will find great encouragement in
their pages, and will get much help to persevere in prayer,
despite its obscurities and aridities. Even the beginner will
be encouraged to dispose himself for progress by generous
efforts.
The works of St. Teresa should be read, for she may be
called an official teacher of prayer in light of the collect said
in her Mass. Nor is she without sympathy for, or experience
of, the weaknesses and repugnances of human nature. St. John
of the Cross frightens many who do not know him, but two
of his works, The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night
of the Soul, will be of great help to many who have false
notions of prayer. He it was who gave the Little Flower
such light and encouragement.
The Spiritual Life, by
Tanquerey, is, as already noted, an invaluable work of
reference on this as on all questions of the spiritual life.
There are two large works on prayer that can be read with
profit: The Graces of Interior Prayer, by Fadier Poulain, S.J.,
and The Degrees of the Spiritual Life, by Canon Saudreau.
These two writers represent different schools of thought,
but both agree in putting the higher stages of prayer before
us as something to be desired and prayed for, and something
for which we should dispose ourselves. The part of Fr.
Poulain’s work which treats of the prayer of simplicity has
been reprinted in pamphlet form by the English C.T.S.,
but his treatment of what he terms the prayer of quiet should
also be read. Reference has already been made to Holy
Wisdom, by Fr. Augustine Baker, O.S.B. ; A Book of Spiritual

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107

Instruction, by Blosius, is a classic of the same school. The
work of Dom Vital Lehodey, O.C.R., The IVays of Meatal
Prayer, is admitted to be one of the best practical handbooks
on the subject; while a little book by Dom Chautard, O.C.R.,
The Soul of the Apostolate, is a most readable and effective
summing-up of the absolute need for an interior life in all
forms of spiritual activity.
But knowledge alone is not enough. The three infused
theological virtues of faith, hope and charity are of everincreasing importance in the life of prayer. It is, however,
the need of faith that demands to be stressed here—of faith,
not merely during the act of praying, but also during the
whole spiritual life, for, as we have seen, prayer becomes
more and more closely connected with the rest of the
spiritual life as it progresses. From one point of view, all
progress and purification in this matter might be roughly
summed up as a gradual replacement of seeing, feeling, and
perceiving by believing. For the sensual man—whom we
can here take to be the man who lives by feeling and the
senses—perceiveth not the things of God. The just man, as
St. Paul tells us, lives by faith. Sooner or later the soul
who would come close to God must live by a naked faith,
believing in the midst of darkness by a sheer effort of the
grace-aided will. One might even say that the soul will
have to “ believe ” in its own fervour ; it certainly will not
be able to “ feel ” it.
Without faith no one would think of entering religion;
without faith, no one would value the Sacraments; without
faith, no one would give supernatural obedience to a fallible
human superior. The whole of religious obedience rests on
faith, and this a faith that may have to be exercised in the
teeth of the opposition caused by the spirit of human
independence in the subject, or by apparent human weakness
in the superior, for even if the superior is a saint in all
his works, our own human eye will manage to find some
failing in his words or reasons—something that arouses our

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

opposition and tempts us to cry out: “ I will not serve,”—
something that can only be overcome by the faith that secs
God’s hand and will in all the official works of His appointed
representatives.
St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that it is by the two channels
of faith and of the Sacraments that the Passion of Christ is
applied to our souls. Faith is demanded by the Church for
Baptism. Faith is required from us by Our Lord when we
pray. Faith is the breath of the spiritual life, the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not.
The importance, then, of living by faith, even in the early
stages of the spiritual life, is evident. “ Without faith it is
impossible to please God.” And since progress will only
lead us to a life of pure faith, the more we try to live by
faith, the sooner and the more rapidly shall we advance.
In one connection faith is of capital importance, that is,
in the reception of the Sacraments, and, in particular,
immediately before their reception. Although the Sacraments
have their own power of action, yet the extent of the grace
they produce in us depends very much on our dispositions,
in particular on our faith, hope, and charity. By stirring up
our faith, we lay the foundation for an increase of hope and
charity, and thus promote our rapid growth in the
spiritual life.
But the chief importance of faith is that it is faith that
unites us to God in this life. Neither our senses nor our
reason can lay hold of God, but faith touches God and keeps
us in a vital contact with Him that makes us one with Him.
The use of our senses and reason can even become an obstacle
to this union, and so St. John of the Cross insists that all
these faculties must be completely mortified, and the soul
must learn to live by faith alone, before it can be completely
united to God. Since union with God is the essence of the
whole spiritual life, the supreme importance of faith in every
phase of that life is evident; above all, it is indispensable
for prayer.

Chapter XX

“ MANY ARE CALLED . .
HERE is a further reason which makes it advisable for
the soul trying to live a life of prayer to consult the
literature of the subject. We have been watching
its progress after its departure from the fleshpots of Egypt,
following it through the desert of dry and arid prayer, where
it has to learn to live by the manna of faith. It is not to
our purpose to discuss its further progress; but since we are
on the borders of the Promised Land, one must beware lest
one commit the original fault of leaving the soul under a
wrong and gloomy impression about the great joys that await
it in that land (lowing with milk and honey. Still, one cannot
here attempt to describe the delights and consolations of the
different sorts of contemplative prayer that may be granted
to the soul who has been courageous enough to trust in
God’s guidance and persevere in following Him through the
desert of darkness. The literature already indicated, or such
first-hand accounts as are found, say, in the life of St. Teresa,
will help the soul to realise that a foretaste of heaven on
this earth lies before it.
It is true that, although the soul’s trials are by no means
over when it nears the summit of the mountain of prayer,
there are no joys in this life to equal those that the
heights of prayer can bring. Whether all are called to this
high state or not is a question that need not detain us.
It is, however, quite safe to say that all may laudably pray
and prepare themselves for the higher graces of prayer,
provided that their motives are sound and that they base
their hope on the mercy of God, on the merits of Our
Saviour, and on their own poverty of spirit. In thus working
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towards the graces of prayer, nothing is lost, for, as we have
pointed out, the work of preparation is nothing else but the
generous accomplishment of all that is already required by
the nature of the religious state or by the office of the
priesthood. Of course, the condition of the soul for which
God normally waits before He bestows His graces of con­
templative prayer in any high degçee, implies no small
measure of self-abnegation and virtue. But God is no respecter
of persons, and for His own wise ends He often bestows
His grace—even His special grace—where there is little or
no merit. Besides, even when He does wait for a stable state
of generous service before calling the soul to a higher place
at the banquet of Elis love, He Himself is the most earnest
and the most energetic agent in the work of tire soul’s
preparation.
In any case, this level of fervour is no higher than that
which can be, and which really should be, attained in the
religious life. The tragedy is that so many souls go far on
the way to attain this state and make nearly all the necessary
sacrifices, but let themselves be prevented from finishing
their course by an attachment to some tawdry trifle that they
will not try to give up. If, in fact, a number of priests and of
souls in religion do fail to reach contemplation, it is not so
much that too high a degree of perfection is required for
its attainment, but rather because of some obstinate refusal
on their part to deny some small desire of self-love. “ The
little more, and oh ! how much! ” From the moment that
we deliberately decide to persist in a refusal of some request
that we know God is making of us, that self-surrender which
is the foundation of our union with God is destroyed, and
contemplative prayer, which is the flower and fruit of that
union, is quite out of the question. Sometimes it is the very
gift of God that we refuse to give up, holding on to His
consolations like a child that refuses to be weaned. We forget
the exhortation of the Apostles to be zealous for better

“MANY ARE CALLED ..."

m

gifts; we forget the great principle “Trade till 1 come,”
for we must always use the gifts of God in trading with Him
and on His mercy, until He gives us Himself in as close a
union as possible. That is why generosity and a spirit of
self-sacrifice arc so essential for advance in prayer. We must
give God a blank cheque on ourselves and on all that we
have, relying on His grace and mercy to give us all the means
to meet each of His requests for payment in surrender and
in sacrifice.
In this connection, it may be said that if anyone try the
experiment, if one may call it such, of refusing God nothing
for a period, say, of six months, he will be amazed at the
transformation in his spiritual life. If we only had the courage
to abandon ourselves to Him Whom we know with such
certainty to be so loving a Father! If we only could stir up
our faith and realise that Our Lord meant what He said—
that His yoke is easy and His burden light! Is it not
extraordinary that we cannot take God at His word?
To reach such heights of prayer is impossible without a
resolute spirit of mortification. Deliberate habits of sin must
be absolutely renounced and vigorously resisted. The
deliberate and habitual breach of any rule, of any command
of superiors, or a similar neglect of any duty, has to be
eliminated also. Further, we must never allow a spirit of
self-indulgence to take charge of our conduct; our guiding
spirit should be one of self-sacrifice. At first sight this seems
hard—too hard—but it becomes lighter and more
“ reasonable ” when we realise that we are only asked to
mortify ourselves in order that Jesus may live in us. Our
death to ourselves by mortification is His resurrection in us,
and so we must learn to try in all eventualities to act for the
sake of Jesus rather than for love of our own ease. That
means that we must declare war on our self-seeking, and make
it our constant aim to seek Jesus. It further means that we
must try to accept cheerfully all the trials that He sends us,

I I2

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

of whatever sort they be,—trials of soul, trials of body,
trials from within, trials from without, trials from men,
trials from work,—and to sec in them a new chance of uniting
ourselves to Jesus in suffering, of lightening His cross, and of
filling up what is wanting for the Church in the sufferings
of Christ. They will serve as another occasion of uniting
ourselves in faith to our loving Father, Who rules all things
sweetly and makes all work together for our good. They
will also be an occasion of uniting ourselves to the Holy
Spirit, Who dwells in us to give strength to our weakness
and light to our blindness, so that we may meet the needs
of every moment.
But does a spirit of mortification mean any more than
that? Does it mean, perhaps, that we must undertake a
programme of penance—particularly of corporal penance ?
This is a somewhat delicate question, because the answer
depends considerably on particular circumstances. It is
undoubtedly true that if men did more penance, there would
be many more raised to the prayer of true contemplation.
On the other hand, indiscreet and imprudent attempts at
inflicting penance upon one’s self have more than once led
to disaster. The motives and the effect must be healthy,
and the matter is one in which the individual is not a
competent judge of his own case. In the more penitential
orders, the customary measure of mortification practised by
fervent souls should never be exceeded without competent
advice, and even then should be controlled by some prudent
authority, even if that can only be done at long intervals.
In those orders that do not provide for much penance in their
regular life, and also in the life of the clergy, there is
obviously more room, and even need, for personal initiative.
Again, however, one cannot give a general dispensation
from the time-proved need for advice and control, though
one must admit the difficulty—which is in some cases
almost an impossibility—of finding a prudent and competent

“MANY ARE CALLED ..."

113

adviser who has the leisure and the inclination for the
direction of souls. Yet God’s providence must have provided
for these cases, and fervour added to prayer will always find
the right person. In general, it may be said that those fasts
in which our own will is found have excellent authority for
their reprobation. Those penances that interfere with the
proper performance of the duties of our state are by that
very fact condemned. Those that we can do with a “ dry ”
but genuine cheerfulness and that do not pre-occupy us too
much nor pu IT us up and make us thank God that we are
not like the rest of men—all such are salutary and sound.
Penance should be done in a spirit of compunction, to
atone for our sins, but, better still, it should also be done
in union with Our Lord, to lighten the load of His cross and
to fulfil the fellowship of His love and suffering.
If one here tried to summarise the conditions that are
required for contemplation, one would be compelled to
write at great length, for it would mean making a complete
summary of the perfection of the spiritual life. But it must
be insisted, that if one did so, one would not have to mention
a single disposition or achievement which every religious,
active as well as contemplative, is not already bound to seek
by the obligations of his state, or else expected to acquire
for its perfection. And, as we have seen, the office of
the priesthood makes similar demands on its holders. The
tragedy is that there are so many priests and religious who
have “ kept all these things from their youth,” and then,
when Our Lord draws their attention to some attachment
that He wants them to give up, who turn away sorrowful—for
they think they have many possessions—many talents—many
dreams—many hopes, too much to give up; and the thing
that holds them is so tawdry and so trifling, is so tragically
trash, that the angels must stare in amazement that men can
be so mad.
Whole-hearted fidelity to God’s will in the faithful

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

following of His commandments, in the exact observance of
one’s rules, of one’s daily duties, of the exercise of the
common life; generosity in corresponding with the inspir­
ations of grace, in determining to refuse God nothing that Fie
clearly asks for, in abandoning one’s self to every detail of
His providence; humility which distrusts its own strength,
and puts all its confidence in God’s merciful help alone; a
resolute desire of fulfilling every detail of God’s requirements,
—these will lead a soul to advance quickly and beyond all
expectations. A soul so minded will soon find that God
will not be outdone in generosity, that He begins to give it
special helps, that He begins to take over a greater part of
the work of the soul’s advancement, and shares with it His
own strength. Such a soul will find itself becoming more
and more united to God in thought, in outlook and in action,
and its prayer will develop accordingly.
Now, there is one error which is a great obstacle to this
development and must, therefore, be avoided, though it must
be admitted that this erroneous view finds some support in
the works of certain authors who reacted too strongly against
the errors of their own time. As we saw some think that
there is no different state of prayer after ordinary medita­
tion in its strict sense save the extraordinary phenomena
that are associated in many minds with the heights of
sanctity. This is a Serious error, and all that has been written
here about the development of prayer along the lines of human
friendship should help the reader to avoid it and to see that,
on the contrary, prayer should be capable of infinite degrees
of growth, and may reasonably be expected to lead to such a
complete union of heart and soul with God that it should
become contemplation. It must not be thought that the
extraordinary ecstasies and visions that we read of in the
lives of some saints are an essential part either of sanctity
or of the higher states of contemplation. Far from it; not
only are they no part of true prayer—for there are some who

“ MANY ARE CALLED . . .»

lls

went to the top of the ladder of prayer without showing any
of these effects—but they are even sometimes a manifestation
of the lack of complete perfection in the state of prayer of
that soul, and may be due to human weakness; though, of
course, they may also be the direct work of God, designed
to carry out His own special plans in regard to a particular
soul. In practice, anyhow, they lie outside the essential path
of prayer, which leads one deeper and deeper into the depths
of one’s own soul, there to find one’s self completely united
to God.
However late it be when a soul secs the full possibilities
of the spiritual life or finds the right way of prayer, it is of
great importance that the resolve to advance to close union
with God, be not overcome by the fear that now it is too late.
Even though the past has been stained by sin, or time has
been wasted through mistaken direction or an unsuitable way
of praying, there can be nothing—absolutely nothing of any
sort whatsoever—in the past that can be an insuperable
obstacle to holiness, if we but turn our hearts to God. He is
our Saviour, that is His Name. He became man to save us
from our sins, and surely He will save us from our mistakes!
“ To them that love God, all things work together unto
good,” writes St. Paul, and that includes even our sins. God
has infinite power and infinite mercy; He can utilise all our
past and turn it to good account. No matter how late the
hour, or how great the obstacles, we must turn to God with
unlimited confidence. In fact, since all the glory is to be
His, there will always be some apparently insuperable
difficulty or weakness on our part. Nevertheless, “ all things
are possible to him that believeth”; no matter what is
lacking to us, be it time or merit, “ our sufficiency is
from God.”

8

Chapter XXI

CONCLUSION
O many readers will probably feel that much of what
has been written in the later chapters has no practical
reference to themselves, that one cannot help quoting
St. John of the Cross, who is the authority par excellence on
this subject. In his book, The Living Flame of Love, when
treating of the development of the prayer of meditation, he
writes :
“ The state of beginners ... is one of meditation and
of acts of reflection. It is necessary to furnish the soul in
this state with matter for meditation, that it may make
reflections and interior acts, and avail itself of the sensible
spiritual heat and fervour, for this is necessary in order to
accustom the senses and desires to good things, that, being
satisfied by the sweetness thereof, they may be detached
from the world. When this is in some degree effected,
God begins at once -to introduce the soul into the state of
contemplation, and that very quickly, especially in the case of
religious, (italics are ours) because these, having renounced the
world, quickly fashion their senses and desires according to
God; they have, therefore, to pass at once from meditation
to contemplation. This passage, then, takes place when the
discursive acts and meditation fail, when sensible sweetness
and first fervours cease, when the soul cannot make
reflections as before, nor find any sensible comfort, but is
fallen into aridity, because the chief matter is changed into
the spirit, and the spirit is not cognisable by sense. As all
the natural operations of the soul, which are within its
control, depend on the senses only, it follows that God is

S

116

CONCLUSION

>17

now working in a special manner in this state, that it is He
that infuses and teaches, that the soul is the recipient on
which He bestows spiritual blessings by contemplation, the
knowledge and the love of Himself together; that is, He
gives it loving knowledge without the instrumentality of its
discursive acts, because it is no longer able to form them
as before.
“ At this time, then, the direction of the soul must be
wholly different from what it was at first. If formerly it was
supplied with matter for meditation and it did meditate, now
that matter must be withheld and meditation must cease,
because, as I have said, it cannot meditate, do what it will,
and distractions are the result. If before it looked for fervour
and sweetness and found them, let it look for them no more
nor desire them; and if it attempt to seek them, not only
will it not find them, but it will meet with aridity, because
it turns away from the peaceful and tranquil good secretly
bestowed upon it, when it attempts to fall back on the
operations of sense. In this way it loses the latter without
gaining the former, because the senses have ceased to be the
channel of spiritual good.”
The primary purpose in quoting this long passage is to
draw attention to the words in which the Saint indicates for us
the fundamental disposition for the passage to contempla­
tion, namely: that one has fashioned one’s senses and desires
according to God, which disposition, with its result, he
expects to find quickly reached in the case of religious. But
the whole passage has been quoted because it sums up in
pregnant language, weighted with all the authority of the
Church’s Doctor of Prayer, all that these pages have been
trying to say. The holy doctor’s opinion of the effect that
may be naturally expected from life in the religious state,
both as to formation in virtue and advance in prayer, will be
found to be quite similar to the hopes held out by St. Teresa
in her writings. The essence of the religious state has not

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

changed since their time; it is a state of tending to perfection.
Now, it is impossible to tend properly and completely to
perfection without leading an interior life. We may go
further and say that without an interior life it is impossible
for a priest or a religious to live an exterior life that is not
ruined by sterility, supernatural uselessness and inefficacy.
If there be anything wrong with our priests and religious
of to-day—if there be any failure even on the part of the
laity to live up to. the faith that they undoubtedly possess—
if our resistance to the infiltration of a pagan civilisation, of
pagan manners, and of pagan principles into our minds and
hearts, into our public and our private life, is not as vigorous,
as sturdy, as resourceful, as it should be,—the cause
is surely to be found in the lack of an interior life, and,
fundamentally, in the lack of such a life in its proper measure
among priests and religious. With the best will in the world,
it is not easy to be assured that all is as it should be. There
are not wanting voices—competent voices—crying out in
warning; there are not lacking signs—unmistakeable signs—
giving them support; it is even said that supernatural
admonitions are not unheard of, all deploring the lack of due
fervour and interior life in religion. It is not for us to
attempt to pass judgment upon the state of affairs. But it is
for each of us to examine his own condition, and see whether
it is in harmony with the wonderful spiritual equipment that
God has given each one of us in Baptism. For God Himself
has come to live in our souls, to be our Guide, our Strength,
our Life and our Love.
The real root of the trouble is that we do not realise,
nor have we a lively practical faith in, the effects of Baptism
and the possibilities of the Christian life. We do not realise
that the Christian life is the life of Christ lived by Christ in
us, not merely our own paltry existence, dragged out in lonely
weakness. We do not estimate the interior life at its proper
worth nor give it its due place in our scale of values. For

CONCLUSION

11 ■>

many of us the spiritual life, and especially the religious life,
is a life of external practices and works, in which greatness
and success is measured in much the same way as in any other
walk of life. As a result, our spiritual programme is closely
and narrowly limited—limited by a feeling that when all is
said and done, our progress will depend upon our own selves,
upon our own strength of character, our own will-power,
our own resources ; and knowing these to be so poor, we
cannot help feeling that such things as progress in holiness
and advance in prayer are not for us.
This, of course, is one of those half-4ruths that are the
greatest of all errors. It is true that God has told us that
without Him we can do nothing, but has His Holy Spirit
not also written for our consolation that we can do all things
in Him Who strengthens us? It is true that the world is
in us and is dragging us down to its own level, but have we
not heard Our Lord's assurance that He has overcome the
world? Now, is there any closer union of strength than
that of Baptism,—where the Spirit of God so unites Himself
to the soul as to make it a living member of the Body of the
Son of God,—where God divinises the soul in its strength
and in its possibilities? If the Sacraments effect what they
signify—and that is the official formula for their action,—
what conclusion must be drawn from the fact that in the
Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist the Body and Blood of
Christ is given to us for our food?—what limit may we set
to the strength or to the possibilities of a soul which is
nourished by the living Flesh of God Himself? The wonder
is, not that a priest or a religious should be expected to
aspire to high perfection and to the graces of prayer, but
rather that any priest or religious, or even any Catholic,
should fail not only to aim at them but even, as a general
rule, to attain them!
Perhaps this failure to realise the “ talents " that they are
leaving buried in their souls is the reason why so many

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

religious take such a distorted view of their religious life.
For many the day’s work consists of some special duty—
teaching or preaching or nursing or study, for example—as
its principal and essential part, with a number of devotional
exercises inserted as a sort of accidental colouring, a necessary
concession to one’s state of life, but for all that, something
by no means of first-rate importance—something which is
often a considerable handicap to the main task and at times
rather a nuisance! As for the interior life—well, that is a
matter, they say, of a special vocation, which has nothing to
do with the ordinary religious. Here we have a complete
reversal of the true scale of values coupled with a capital
error as to the nature of the primary and essential purpose of
the religious state, which—no matter what may be the nature
or particular purpose of a particular congregation—is always
the sanctification of the individual members, to which
everything else must, in a general way, be subordinated.
To these two errors one can trace most of the surprise that
many readers will feel on seeing the above words of St. John
of the Cross applied to modern religious; in fact, much of
what has been written in this book will appear to many as
far-fetched and unpractical—as a mistaken application to the
religious life in general, of what, they say, is really peculiar
to the contemplative life. This view is really a result of the
erroneous opinions which have just been pointed out. The
essential nature of the Christian life and of the religious state
have not changed one whit; and all conclusions based on
those natures are as valid now as they were in all ages of the
Church. Holiness is still a primary duty, and a practical
possibility. Our Lord’s exhortation to be perfect as the
Father in Heaven is perfect is still just as insistent and just as
feasible as it was the day He uttered it.
Every single Christian soul can say: “ During every moment
of His life Jesus thought of me, and loved me; in all His
sufferings He had my needs in His mind, and in His view;

CONCLUSION

1

1 1

in all His joys, His Heart was set on sharing these joys with
me; in all His labours, in all His teaching, He never ceased
to have my holiness in view; one of His greatest tortures
was His longing for my happiness and my love; He knew that
He had done and suffered more than a hundred times enough
to make me holy, to make me a saint. He saw clearly that
the only obstacle to the achievement of His cherished purpose
for me was my own refusal to trust Him, to believe in Him,
to. cast all my cares upon Him—to take Him at His word,
and to submit to His easy yoke and to the light burden which
He had specially planned for me; for He, seeing my poverty,
had, as it were, lived my life for me with His own perfection,
and was longing for the day when I would make my own the
result of His labour and suffering, by doing what He asked
me to do.”
All this is no exaggeration: Jesus has merited everything
for us, even the power to make His merits our own. He
only needs our good-will and humility to make us enter into
the fruits of His labours. Nor need we think that Jesus
loses sight of each of us in the enormous number of the
faithful: He is God, and has all God’s infinity. His intense
love for each one is not a whit the less because of His glowing
love for all men. In fact, we get a truer picture of the Heart
of Jesus by remembering that He loved me, and delivered
Himself for me, than by considering ourselves as one of the
millions sharing His heart.
Every act of Christ’s life was one of intense longing and
passionate love for me. Nor has that love lessened in His
life in the Sacrament of the Altar. Still more can I be sure
that it is no less in His life in my sold. In that awful moment
in the Garden, in the depths of what in anyone else would
be called despair, when He uttered that cry of bitterest
agony, of which the Psalmist speaks in the words: “ What
is the use of My Blood?”—it was from my failure to
correspond with His grace that He was suffering; it was my

ni

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

sins, my refusal to trust Him, my rejection of His pleading,
my disbelief of His love, my distrust of His power and of
Flis plans, my hardheartedness and my selfishness, my selfsufficiency and my sloth, that were in His mind and that
caused Him to pour out the sweat of Flis precious Blood.
He still implores us to let His work bear fruit in our lives,
to set some value on His Precious Blood, to have some
trust, some faith in Flis power and in Flis love.
Truly, only too truly, can He still say to us: “ Oh! ye of
little faith: why do you doubt? ” The charity of Christ
urgeth us; the love of Him Who first loved us cries out to
us; let us stir up the grace, the faith, the hope, the love
that is in us by the Sacraments of water, of oil, and of the
Body and Blood of God. Let us think of what our daily
Food is, and see what our strength and our life should be.
Let us cease saying that these tilings are not for me, and
remember that it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who
liveth in me. Let us realise that our strength is Christ’s
strength, that our hopes and our possibilities are Christ’s
possibilities, that our needs are Christ’s needs, that our
merits are Christ’s merits, that our spirit is Christ’s Spirit,
the Paraclete, the “ Strengthencr,” the Spirit of God, and we
shall renew our courage and our earnestness, and filled with
fresh hope and complete confidence in the word of God,
remembering that we are the Body of Christ, we shall launch
out again into the deep, where we have long been labouring
without success, now determined to seek with confidence for
that perfection which the Heart of Jesus longs to find in us, to
produce in us and with us.
In particular, let each soul renew his hope and his intention
of persevering in prayer. First, he must resolve with
determination, never under any circumstances to give up
his attempt to progress in prayer. Let him take up prayer
as he should take up the whole of the spiritual life, as a
quest for Jesus, a striving for close union with Jesus. Let

CONCLUSION

ι»3

him meditate as long as is necessary—during spiritual reading,
if needs be—but let him proceed to pray to Our Lord in
his own words as soon as he can and as often as he can. Let
him not be afraid to talk to God without words whenever
he can, and so all the time he is coming nearer to Jesus.
Let him throughout the day make frequent aspirations to
Jesus; they should not be long, they need not be verbal;
a sigh or a smile of the heart is sufficient. Let him seek
Jesus in all things; let him unite himself to Jesus by doing
what pleases Him—by doing the will of God. That is the
way to lay hold of Jesus. When the time comes, when he
can feel Jesus near, let him make.full use of it; but he must
not be so attached to this sensible presence of Jesus as to
refuse to let Him go when the Master decides it is expedient
for the soul that 1 le should deprive it of His sensible presence
and send it another Comforter.
If all power of prayer seems to be lost, if the time of
prayer becomes a period of distraction and aridity, let him
not lose courage, nor change his resolution. His prayer then
is made by submitting to the will of God as completely and
as generously as he can. He need not be afraid to make use
of-any available expedient to help him to fight distractions.
Many get great help by using a book, but this must not be
done in such a way as to turn prayer into spiritual reading;
one must stop frequently and turn one’s heart to God, and
listen to see if He has not something to say to him.
Perseverance under this heavy trial has a great reward, and
touches the heart of God. The soul should try to be ready
to accept any suffering that God sends him, for union with
Jesus is sealed in the fellowship of His sufferings and by our
patient endurance we are made partakers of the Passion of
Christ. But our chief aim must be humility. The Kingdom
of God is already within us, but we make it our own by our
poverty of spirit. This is our title to union with God, and
it is the first principle of the spiritual life that Our Lord

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

taught in public. The soul, then, must never, never trust
in itself, and, above all, it must never, never, under any
circumstances, cease to trust Jesus absolutely; God became
man to save sinners, to give life to those who are dead in
sin, to give strength to the weak and weary, to give Himself
to the humble, to the poor in spirit. Let us take Him at
His word, let us take Him at His Name, let us submit
ourselves to Him in obedient humility and loving confidence,
let us say to Him with Mary: “ Be it done by me, be it done
to me, according to Thy word,” and then we shall be filled
with Christ, through Whom and with Whom and in Whom,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, is all the glory of God.

ΛΓΓ1 NDIX I
There seem to be two different views of the purpose of
the exercise known as meditation, running through the
literature of the subject. Sometimes its reflective nature is
stressed, and it is considered to be a means of building up
an idea of God, of His Son’s human life, of supernatural
truths and of forming convictions, which will be the main­
spring of our spiritual life. At other times, the function of
reflections is subordinated to the production of affections,
and stress is laid upon the acts which are to be made. One
might say that one view sees it as a work of the head, while
the other regards it as a work of the heart. That contrast,
however, would be too sharp. Even though reflections,
theoretically speaking, are quite distinct from the affections,
yet, in practice, they are not so easily separated. In practice,
one cannot think of such subjects without being moved
towards the production of some sort of affection, even though
this be quite unconscious; nor can one talk to Our Lord
without in some way thinking about Him. Still there is,
perhaps, a difference of stress between the two views, and
this is why some wotdd prefer to be less definite about the
setting aside of considerations when affections begin to come,
than we have been in Chapters III and IV.
No one can question the value of systematic reflection for
the formation of the spiritual life, but there are many souls
who find such difficulty in persevering in it, that they are in
danger of giving up the exercise, without providing any
substitute for it. To lessen that danger we have stressed the
affective aspect of mental prayer, and at the same time,
insisted on the importance of spiritual reading. These two
recommendations must be taken together; they are both
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1

DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

indispensable parts of the one plan of reversing the tendency
to compression, and of distributing over different parts cf
the day the exercises that are sometimes grouped together
under the name of meditation. It should also be noted that
we have insisted, firstly, that meditation, in the sense of that
informal and often spontaneous thinking about spiritual
things, during the course of the day, should never be given
up ; and secondly, that a soul must be ready to return to the
use of formal considerations when that is possible at the
time of prayer, if and whenever the facility for the formation
of acts ceases. This latter point applies, not only to one
particular hour of prayer, but also to a whole period of one’s
spiritual life. It is only on such conditions that one can
safely urge concentration upon the affective aspect of mental
prayer.
In our view, both mental prayer and spiritual reading
(or their equivalents) are normally essential for a healthy
spiritual life. We look to spiritual reading, and the con­
sequent informal reflection to which it leads, for the
formation of those ideas and convictions that are sought by
systematic meditation.
A time may come when neither consideration or affections
are possible at prayer, and aridity and distractions are such
that one feels the need of some help. It is consoling to
remember that St. Teresa, who had advanced fairly far in
the ways of prayer during the first years of her religious life,
afterwards found herself unable to pray without a book, for
more than fourteen years. A suitable book, then, can be a
great help to souls in such circumstances. They should,
however, be careful not to pass the whole time of prayer in
mere reading, but should frequently pause, either to make
some attempt at affections of some sort, with or without
words, or at least to permit the development of any affection,
however imperceptible, that may have arisen from the
reading. It sometimes happens that the only way to keep

APPENDICES

117

distractions in check is to keep a book open and proceed in
this fashion. The best type of book is one which contains
sufficient acts, but their style and content must be in
harmony with the soul’s outlook; whatever is not suitable
should be passed over. Even if one pauses to murmur only
the Name of Jesus or that of His Blessed Mother, one may be
quite satisfied with such attempts at prayer.

APPENDIX II
Bibliographical Note

The literature of the subject of prayer is so enormous that
we content ourselves with indicating a few books which have
proved helpful, and in which a more complete treatment of
the points touched upon in this book will be found:—
AUTHOR

Fr. Alphonsus
[Carm.]
Baker, [O.S.B.]
de Besse [O.S.F.]
Blosius [O.S.B.]
de Caussade [S.J.]
Chautard [O.C.R.]
Garrigou-Lagrange
[O.P.] * ’
Lehodey [O.C.R.]
Poulain [S.J.]
Saudreau

Tanquerey

WORK

Practice of Mental Prayer and
of Perfection. [4 vols.]
Holy Wisdom [Sancta Sophia}
The Science of Prayer
A Booh of Spiritual Instruction
On Prayer
The Soul of the Apostolats
Christian Perfection and Con­
templation.
The Ways of Mental Prayer
The Graces of Interior Prayer
Degrees of the Spiritual Life
[2 vols.]
The Spiritual Life

PUBLISHER

Dcsclce.
Burns Oates.
B. O. & W.
B. O. & W.
B. O. & W.
Gill, B. O. & W.
Herder.

Gill.
Kegan Paul.
B. O. & W.
Desclée.

The works of St. John of the Cross have been published
by Baker, and there is a new translation by Prof. Allison
I eers, which is published by Burns, Oates & Washbourne. The
Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night of the Soul are the two
books in which St. John’s doctrine on prayer is to be found,
but these two works must be taken together. They really
represent two different aspects of the one process, in which
the work of the soul is considered in The Ascent, while the
action of God is explained in The Dark Night. They should
not be regarded as quite distinct and successive stages, although
there is a development as one goes from the former to the
12S

APPENDICES

119

latter. These works are best approached through some form
of introduction. A little book by Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary
Magdalen (O.C.D.), published by Baker, under the title of
St. John of the Cross, can hardly be surpassed for this purpose.
It will be found to be of very great help in understanding
and correlating the Saint’s teaching.
St. Teresa’s teaching on prayer will be found in three of
her works: her Life, The Interior Castle, and The Way oj
Perfection. The work of Fr. Alphonsus at the head of our
list above is based on the teaching of St. John of the Cross
and of St. Teresa, and quotes from both at length. There
are excellent summaries of the teaching of two Saints in the
third volume of Christian Spirituality, by Pourrat, published
by Burns, Oates & Washbourne. This volume gives a
summary of the doctrine of every school of spirituality since
the sixteenth century, but the whole work is well worth
reading.
The doctrine of St. Francis de Sales and that of St. Jane
Frances de Chantal will be found there, but the original works
of St. Francis must be read. They are the Introduction to the
Devout Life and A Treatise on the Love of God. The latter has
been published in an abridged form by Sands, who have also
given us a very valuable volume under the title, The Spiritual
Life, which is a summary of the instructions given by St. Jane
Frances on the virtues and on prayer. Canon Saudreau has
summarized the teaching of the two Saints in two tiny volumes,
Mystical Prayer according to St. Francis de Sales and Mystical
Prayer according to St. Jane de Chantal. (Sheed & Ward).
This author has also given us a summary of the teachings of
the different schools in The Life of Union with Cod ; and has
summarized his own doctrine in an excellent little work,
Towards Perfect Love and the Practice ofMental Prayer. (B.O. & W.)
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius has led to the growth of
a school of spirituality, which has given us so many excellent
books that it is impossible to choose any one for citation

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DIFFICULTIES IN MENTAL PRAYER

here. Tanqucrcy gives a good treatment of the Saint’s
method of prayer in The Spiritual Life.
Fr. Augustine Baker’s teaching on prayer has been published
separately by Dom Weld-Blundell under the title, Prayer and
Holiness (Magnani: London), a work which will be of much
help to many readers. In Self-Discipline and Holiness
(Methuen), the same author gives us another part of Fr.
Baker’s teaching. In addition to the work mentioned above,
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has written also a smaller work,
The Three IKy'S of the Spiritual Life.
There is a very complete bibliography at the beginning of
Tanqucrcy’s The Spiritual Life. It must be remembered that
one must always be careful to determine in what sense each
author uses his terms. The meaning attached to the same
words varies considerably. In particular, the two words
“ mystical ” and “ contemplation ” are liable to be used
differently by different authors. Whatever their meaning,
their use, however, should not prevent the work in which
they occur from being read by any soul who is willing to
give his heart to God.

Μ. H. GILL AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, DUBLIN.