PROGRESS THROUGH MENTAL PRAYER 
by Edward Leen

INTRODUCTION

SAINT PAUL, writing to the Christian converts, addresses them as persons 
called to be Saints. It is clear from this mode of address that, in the 
eyes of the Apostle, the vocation of every Christian, as such, is that he 
be a saint. To the Apostle's mind this calling, once one has been baptized, 
is ineluctable. To evade it to the end is not merely to risk but actually 
to incur everlasting unhappiness. Startling as this thought is, there is 
not needed much reflection to see that its truth cannot be gainsaid. 
Nothing "unsaintly" can find place in heaven. What is definitely and by 
irrevocable choice "unsaintly" is for ever excluded from the presence of 
God, and this is necessarily so by the very nature of things. It is not in 
consequence of a stern, arbitrary and, if He chose, revocable decree of 
banishment issued by God that the unholy soul is banned from heaven. The 
unholy soul simply could not exist in heaven. It would shrive! up in a 
veritable agony. It could no more exist there than could a dry twig in a 
blazing furnace. Light is not more incompatible with darkness than the 
sanctity of God with what is unholy. It is the infinite purity, the perfect 
sanctity of God that makes heaven impossible for the unsaintly. Since 
eternal happiness depends on sanctity, it is important to have a very clear 
notion of what it consists in and of the way by which it is attained.

What is sanctity? The philosophers, aiming at making clear what a thing 
is, very often prepare the way by pointing out what it is not. This 
procedure is a great help towards the acquisition of clear ideas, and can 
be applied in the present inquiry with some advantage. By very many 
sanctity would very probably be defined as that which renders a person 
eligible for canonization. Such a definition would be too exacting. Those 
who are placed on the roll of honor of the Church and are offered to the 
veneration and admiration of the faithful are heroic saints. The process of 
canonization reveals the elements of heroic, not of ordinary, sanctity. In 
an army it is not only those decorated with the official insignia of valor 
who are  good, brave and trustworthy soldiers. In God's army the official 
saints are the specially distinguished. There  are multitudes of others who 
make good the vocation of which the Apostle speaks and verify in their 
lives the notion of Christian holiness. Therefore sanctity is not to be 
limited to heroic sanctity.

Neither may sanctity be confounded with ethical perfection. One cannot be a 
saint without having all the qualities that go to make a man, but those 
moral perfections that constitute the perfect ethical man[1] do not 
constitute the saint. One might, abstractly speaking, possess and practice 
all the moral virtues, prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, and all 
the others that come under these heads--one might realize the ideal of the 
perfect man traced by the moral philosophers and yet not be a saint.

Christian sanctity is a supernatural thing. To know what it is, recourse 
must be had to the eternal source of the supernatural, namely, to God 
Himself. God is the supreme Saint. Holy is His Name.[2] He is Sanctity 
Itself, and therefore the exemplar and prototype of all sanctity. The 
holiness that is not modeled on His is not veritable holiness. Hence it 
was that Jesus said to the multitudes: " Be ye therefore perfect, as also 
your heavenly Father is perfect".[3] It is as if He said," You must be 
saints, and if a man is to be a Saint, he must be like God".

In what does God's Infinite Holiness consist? It consists in His Infinite 
Charity, that is in His Infinite love of Himself. This statement needs a 
little explanation  and expansion for, as it stands, it might appear to the 
superficial to savor of an immense egoism.' God is Holy, not for the 
reason that He loves Himself but because That which He does love with an 
infinite intensity is w hat merits to be infinitely loved and chosen for 
its lovableness. God Himself embraces in Himself all that verifies the 
notions of Good.[5] He  loves that Infinite Good infinitely and in that lies 
His Infinite Holiness. He loves proportionately every created participation 
of that all-complete Good. He  loves these created reflections of the 
Infinite Good, not for themselves, but as being ectypes of that which is
the object of His Infinite complacency. In that lies His Holiness and He
loves Himself in these things.

For men and angels also, sanctity lies in the love of that which is worthy 
of most supreme love. It is synonymous with the love of God, and is 
measured by that love. It is scarcely necessary to remark that this love of 
God is not a sentiment, a feeling, or an emotion. It is of the will, not of 
sensibility.[6] It consists in a deliberate election, choice and preference 
of the Supreme and Infinite Good, above all else. God, the Infinite Good, 
as revealed by faith, is made the supreme object of desire to the rejection 
of the claims of all other good things that can be selected in His stead 
and substituted for Him as an object to which the will should adhere. This 
adherence of the will to God is nothing else but the conformity of the 
human will with the Divine; man wills the same things as God wills; he 
rejoices in what pleases God and is saddened by what displeases Him; he 
does God's holy Will with all care and accepts from His hands the daily 
cross. This total surrender to and conformity with the Divine Will implies 
that the Soul has willingly yielded to the attractiveness of God, and this 
willing yielding is love. That man is a Saint for whom the attraction of 
God is supreme above all other attractions. To be a Saint is to be 
effectively enamoured of the beauty of God, to desire Him and to desire 
nothing which would conflict with that desire of God. As for God Himself, 
so also for man, the love of the Supreme Good carries with it a love of 
every created participation of that Infinite Good. But that created good 
must not be loved for itself. It must be cherished because it is of God, 
and because its beauty is a reflection of His.

Amongst these created participations of the Infinite Good which is God, one 
of the fairest is the supernatural perfection of a rational creature. God 
made man to be man. He made him to be something more. By the infusion of 
Sanctifying Grace He made him to be a being whose moral excellence should be 
touched with divinity. The man of God's design in the actual order of 
things is one whose soul should be equipped not only with the moral but 
also with the theological virtues. The human participant of the Infinite 
Good is one in whom exists Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, along 
with Faith, Hope and Charity. The state of soul realized by the possession 
of these seven virtues is good and an object of desire. Aiming at sanctity 
means aiming at a life in which all these virtues are steadily and 
constantly operative.

Jesus Christ was the man who realized this ideal in all its perfection. He 
was, in a supreme measure, prudent, just, brave and temperate. Instead of 
Faith and Hope He possessed from the first their consummation in Vision.[7] 
In charity, that is ardent love of God, the Infinite Good, He could not be 
rivaled. In Him, human perfection, as planned by God, was fully and 
perfectly realized. God could look upon this handiwork of His Divine Spirit 
and say that 'it was Good.' As such, it was an object, a thing, lovable and 
to be desired. Jesus could, and did, love His own moral and spiritual 
perfection. But He did not make it an object of desire for its own sake. It 
was God that He loved in this perfect earthly mirror of God's Beauty. If He 
wrought in His life and in His actions such a perfect masterpiece of moral 
and spiritual excellence, it was not for the sake of, or because He was 
drawn by the attraction of that moral excellence in itself. He did it 
because it was God's Will that He should do so. God's will is identical 
with Himself. To seek God's will perfectly in all things is the same as to 
pursue the Supreme Good in all things. This Jesus did. He did not exercise 
virtue for virtue's sake, but because he apprehended it as God's will. 
Through and in the act of virtue He as man kept united with God, His 
Supreme Good.

The spiritual life is sometimes spoken of as the seeking after perfection. 
If this be understood to mean that the man aiming at spirituality is to set 
before him his own perfection as an object after which he is to strive, it 
is apt to lead to serious mistakes in the spiritual struggle. It is true 
that the development of a full spiritual life involves in its attainment 
man's perfection; yet it is not precisely at this perfection that he must 
aim, but at God. God is the final end of man and therefore the object after 
which he must strain in all his spiritual and moral endeavors. The 
spiritual life may be more clearly, simply and correctly described as the 
"cultivation of intimacy with God" and the following pages are an attempt 
to show how, ordinarily speaking, the soul may cultivate that intimacy, and 
how it is to overcome the obstacles it encounters in its efforts to become 
intimate with its Creator. God has smoothed the path for the human soul by 
becoming man. To become intimate with God, the soul has only to become 
intimate with Jesus, who is like to the soul in his humanity, like to it in 
all things except sin.[8] Man can grow in friendship with God by growing in 
friendship with One Who is a fellow-man. The spiritual life is the process 
of growth in charity, that is in love of Jesus, true man and yet true God. 
This love not only binds the soul to Jesus, but has the intrinsic effect of 
assimilating it to Him, transforming it to His likeness. "But he who is 
joined to the Lord," writes St. Paul, "is one Spirit."[9]

It is to be observed that the Savior in tracing for men the path they were 
to tread in order to enter into this union with Him, did not point to 
Himself saying, "Behold in me the pattern of, and the living object lesson 
in every human virtue, prudence, justice, courage, kindliness, truth and 
the rest." He did not say, "Seek to acquire all these virtues which you see 
in their perfection in me and then you will become my intimate friends". 
His instruction was much more direct and simple. He said, "Learn of Me, 
that I am meek and humble of heart."[10] One has only to be humble after the 
model of Jesus and all else will follow. How this is so is not immediately 
apparent; for the full implications of the virtue of humility are not 
readily seized. Elsewhere a full analysis of this virtue will be given. 
What is there said may be summarily expressed thus. Humility consists in 
making God all and oneself nothing in one's life. [It is, to use a phrase 
expressive, but, perhaps, of unfortunate associations.] "God over all." It 
is the practical acceptance of St. Michael's battle cry: Quis ut Deus! Who 
is like unto God! It is the complete obliteration of all the false claims 
of self, in face of the all pervading sovereignty of God. All that is 
required on the part of the Christian to make perfect his calling, is to 
efface himself before God. Hence it is that the whole burden of the 
Savior's teaching to men is the practice of self-abnegation. Self-
abnegation is something much larger than either suffering or mortification. 
The instructions on prayer that follow are an exposition of the mode by 
which this conquest of self is carried to a final and successful issue. 
Prayer, properly carried out, will have as its effect the gradual revelation 
to the soul of this disease of self-love which so intimately penetrates the 
very fibers of its being as to pass unobserved by the person that does not 
lead an interior life. In prayer the soul gradually draws into the radiant 
purity and truth of the soul of Jesus. It becomes bathed in and penetrated 
through and through with that radiance; and in this splendor all in it 
that is of self and not of God, all that is in it unlike Jesus, stands 
clearly revealed to that soul's own gaze. When this unlikeness is purged 
away by the action of suffering and the sacrament of the Eucharist, then 
the close union of the soul with God takes place.

Prayer, mortification and silence prepare the soul for the action of the 
Blessed Eucharist. Once the obstacles are cleared away from the soul this 
great Sacrament of union accomplishes in its perfection that which is its 
special effect, namely the creation of a union of spirit between the soul 
and Jesus. Prayer prepares the way for this, for prayer that is good must 
have as its effect the gradual growth in self-abnegation. The presence of 
self-love in the soul is the great obstacle to the action of grace. Prayer 
reveals the presence of this self-love and secures the aid of God to its 
extermination. The grace of Jesus flowing to the soul through prayer and 
the Sacraments carries out this process of extermination. As the Christian 
soul empties of self, it fills up with God, not merely with some thought or 
aspect of God as visualized by a self-centered spirituality or even as 
revealed in created reflections, but with God as He is in Himself and as He 
reveals Himself to " little ones". To be filled with God is to be perfect 
with the very perfection of our heavenly Father, but this happy result is 
conditioned by the soul's practical application of the means explicitly 
stated by Our Divine Guide and Exemplar: "Learn of Me that I am meek and 
humble of heart."[11] It is in no narrow or particular sense that God is said 
" to resist the proud and to give grace to the humble."[12]

In these words of the Apostle is revealed the connection, not logically 
immediate, between humility and spiritual perfection. Humility is not 
fortitude nor temperance nor yet charity. But where it exists all these 
will exist. For the Christian supernatural virtues, the only ones that 
avail for union with God in this life and in the next, are not acquired but 
infused. God gives them. They are communicated with grace. They grow with 
grace and are proportioned in their perfection to the measure of grace. God 
gives grace generously to the humble. To each He gives according to the 
measure He has predestined, which is not the same for all. But each one in 
his own individual case receives according as he is more or less perfectly 
disposed to receive. As humility is perfect so is the disposition perfect. 
The perfectly humble man will flourish in all virtues. He will be fearless, 
temperate, kind, loving, and all the rest. He has not to accomplish acts 
of temperance to have the virtue of temperance. He has it already in virtue 
of grace and in a strength proportioned to that grace. The acts merely give 
a greater facility in the exercise of the virtue and dispose the soul for a 
further increase of grace. So it is in the case of each of the other 
cardinal virtues and in the case of the Theological Virtues.

It is sad that of all those who start out with such confidence and such 
goodwill on the supernatural life, so very few attain to any marked degree 
of spirituality. The causes of this very general failure are known only to 
God. They are necessarily inscrutable to us from whom are hidden the secret 
resistances of the created will. Resistance to grace is the reason of the 
absence of growth in the spiritual life. Yet it would be hard to say that 
the resistance is in the majority of cases deliberate. It is quite possible 
that it may proceed from want of spiritual enlightenment, and that great 
numbers of failures are to be attributed not to bad will but to an 
imperfect understanding. It is quite possible that souls do not succeed 
simply because they employ faulty methods or make a faulty use of good 
ones. Self-knowledge is needed for growth in the spiritual life. St. 
Catherine of Siena stresses this point with great emphasis in her writings. 
Now perhaps the concentration of the soul's attention on the constituent 
elements of the virtues that it ambitions to attain and of the vices it 
longs to eradicate may impede the growth of self-knowledge. One who has 
some experience in dealing with souls cannot fail to remark that very many 
good and promising beginning send in disappointment and discouragement. 
Such a one will observe that generally speaking--not absolutely speaking--
there is a common cause for this. It is due to the soul's being continually 
occupied by the symptoms of its spiritual state, be these symptoms healthy 
or the reverse. Its gaze ranges over the whole field of the virtues and the 
whole field of the vices and it brings its own daily conduct into relation 
with these. It aims at development by striving after the practices of the 
virtues and by eliminating the activities of the vices. In this it can fail 
to go to the radical cause of its growth or rather of its absence of growth 
in virtue.[13] An example from medicine will make this clear. When a patient 
presents himself to a doctor and reveals that he is suffering several kinds 
of pain and in different parts of his body there are two courses of action 
open to the medical man. He may deal with each form of suffering and by the 
resources of his skill bring alleviation to one after the other. In due 
time the patient is discharged from the hospital free from suffering, but 
only to fall back into his old state in a short time. If he has found a 
very skilled doctor his experience will be different. The expert physician 
will set himself to find out in his patient the "focus of infection", which 
is the source of the various ills the sufferer complains of. If this 
'focus' is discovered and eliminated the patient leaves hospital not 
temporarily but permanently cured. In the spiritual world there is an 
unerring and divine Physician. It is Christ Himself. He has diagnosed the 
"focus of infection" in every soul. It is "self" in its varying forms and 
manifestations. Eliminate this and there ensues necessarily a 
healthy spiritual life. Hence it is that He preaches self-abnegation in the 
first place, He preaches it in the second place: He preaches it all the 
time. On it all depends. Self-abnegation is but humility in act: it is the 
practical carrying out in action of the precepts of that fundamental 
virtue.

Jesus is the perfect type of humility of soul: He is the perfect model of 
self-abnegation in act. Mental prayer is the means by which the soul grows 
into the spirit of Jesus, developing in itself "the mind of Christ." If the 
soul that practices mental prayer does not grow in humility and self-
abnegation it is a sign that its prayer is badly made and is not fulfilling 
its purpose. It is essential for spiritual progress that one should have a 
clear vision of the role that prayer has to play in this progress. That 
role is the development, through loving contemplation of the Man-God, of 
the fundamental dispositions of the Sacred Humanity. Little by little the 
soul grows in that basic humility so characteristic of Christ; complete 
dependence on and loving subjection to God become as it were the leaven 
which spreading by imperceptible degrees pervades its every action, it is 
marked by a self-abnegation which aims at purging from it everything that 
is not God, so that "conformed to the image of His Son" it may live its 
life in full accord with the designs of Providence in its regard.

1. By "ethical man" is meant the man who possesses all the natural virtues 
in perfection without grace. Needless to say that in the present order this 
is purely an abstract idea.

2. Cf. Isaias vi. 3. And they [the seraphim] cried to one another and said: 
Holy, Holy, Holy, the Lord God of hosts.

3. St. Matt. v. 48. cf. Levit. xi. 44. " For I am the Lord your God. Be 
holy because I am holy."

4. Egoism is disordered love of self God's love of Himself is not 
disordered since He loves in Himself that Divine Goodness which merits to be 
infinitely loved and is the reason why anything else is worthy of love in 
any degree. Theologians speaking of God's love of Himself call it "most pure 
love," to signify that it cannot be tainted by the disorder of egoism. 
When, in full submission to the Divine Will, we labor to realize in 
ourselves the designs which God has for us, we may be truly said to love 
ourselves. Neither is this love egoism, for it is an ordered love--we love 
ourselves, as it were, in God. But when we seek to gratify ourselves 
independently of God, when our self love does not spring from (and is not 
nurtured by) the true love of God, then we are guilty of egoism.

5. This means that (in scholastic language) the formal reason of God's 
holiness is that He loves infinitely what is worthy of being infinitely 
loved. Concretely that which He does love is Himself, therefore it is only 
materially speaking (to use a scholastic expression) that God is holy 
because He loves Himself.

6. Too often the word "love" is associated exclusively with the emotional 
movements that accompany natural affection. This is a mistake. True love, 
even though it be natural, is not in the emotions but in the will, and the 
emotional movements that often accompany it must not be mistaken for it, 
nor are they necessary for its existence. St. Thomas gives the true notion 
of love when he says that 'to love is to will that good should befall a 
person'; "amare est velle bonum." If all this is true of natural love, with 
how much more force can it be applied to love that is supernatural.

7. Faith and Hope are virtues belonging to the state of the wayfarer. In 
our celestial Fatherland, belief will have found its perfection in 
knowledge, Hope will have passed into possession. But because Charity 
unites us to God even in this life, its perfection in the next is not 
something specifically different but is a closer and more intense union 
with the divinity: "Charity never passeth away."

As regards the Beatific Vision, Christ was never a wayfarer; He enjoyed the 
sight of God from the moment His human soul sprang into existence. Faith 
and Hope when He could not have, for He already possessed something more 
perfect. But His Charity was most intense.

8. Heb. iv. 15.  

9. I Cor. vi. 17.

10. St. Matt. xi. 29.

11. St. Matt. xi. 29.  

12. St. James iv. 6. cf. I St. Peter v. 5.

13. It seems to me from practical experience that this is very often the 
case.



PART I: THE NATURE OF PRAYER

"Let nothing hinder thee from praying always, and be not afraid to be 
justified even unto death: for the reward of God continueth for ever. 
Before prayer prepare thy soul: and be not as a man that tempteth God." 
(Ecclesiasticus xviii. 22-23).


Chapter I: The Aim of Mental Prayer

The science of prayer is the science of the intercourse of man with God. 
Prayer itself is the unfolding of our mind before the most High and in His 
presence. It begins by a desire on the part of the soul to put itself in 
the presence of its Creator; in its development it tends to become an 
interchange of thought and affection between the soul and God. This 
unfolding of our mind before the Almighty is not an idle and egoistic self-
analysis. It is the exposition of one's sentiments, needs and aspirations. 
It is prompted by a desire that God should supply the soul's needs: it is 
sustained by the firm confidence that God is disposed to give the soul all 
that the soul is created to obtain from God the Author of its being.

The ultimate end of the relationship established between the soul and God 
in prayer, is, that the soul should, by His help, abandon its own natural 
earthly way of thinking and willing, and enter into God's views and 
affections, judge things as God judges them, and therefore conform its 
thought and desires to the thoughts and desires of God. This conformity of 
thought and affection between God and the soul, is effected by the soul's 
conformity in thoughts and affections with Jesus Christ, the God-Man. There 
is a significance in the injunction of St. Paul: "For let this mind be in 
you, which was also in Christ Jesus."[1] The final end of prayer, considered 
as a potent means for the development of God's life in the soul, is to 
emancipate us from natural habits or thought and affection and elevate us 
to a supernatural manner of thinking and willing, to change our natural 
outlook on life and things and to make it supernatural. The function of 
prayer therefore (and especially of mental prayer)[2] is to transform our 
minds and through the transformation of our minds to effect a change in our 
dispositions and in our hearts. This mental conversion is not as simple as 
it is usually taken to be; normally it does not take place in a day or in a 
year; it involves a process which demands a long time for its completion.

It is not generally realized to what an extent our modes of thought--even 
when we are leading christian lives--are alien to the modes of thought of 
God. To think "christianly" is not an easy matter. God warns us of this 
through the Prophet Isaias: " For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor 
your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are exalted above the 
earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your 
thoughts".[3] Prayer aims at bridging over this infinite gulf; it aims at 
enabling us to enter into the mind of God and from that point of vantage to 
contemplate all created things and the mysteries of Faith. To arrive at 
this view of reality, it is necessary that it be not the spirit of human 
wisdom or prudence that should shed light upon the objects of our thought, 
or should reveal what are to be the worthy objects of affection. It is 
needful that the light of merely human understanding be replaced by the 
illumination of the Spirit of God. For "the things also that are of God no 
man knoweth, but the spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of 
this world, but the spirit that is of God: that we may know the things that 
are given us from God. . . . But the sensual man perceiveth not these 
things that are of the spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he 
cannot understand because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man 
judgeth all things. . . . For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he 
may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."[4] To the extent that we 
remain insensible to the promptings of the Spirit of God within us, to the 
degree in which we have failed to come under the influence of the Divine 
communication by God of Himself to us, to that extent we are what the 
apostle calls "sensual." At the beginning of our "conversion" we are almost 
entirely "sensual" in our ways of judging and understanding; we are unable 
to probe the inner meaning and penetrate to the spirit of the mysteries of 
our faith. We hold them as true; our knowledge is a knowledge of 
"possession" and not of "use." These mysteries remain, in a sense, external 
to us. We know that they are true. Their outward features--that is, the 
formulae in which they are expressed--are familiar to us, but we have 
little apprehension of their inner meaning; hence they exercise little or 
no power on the affections of our heart or on the direction of our lives. 
For us the vital meanings pent up like life-giving waters within these 
formulae, and containing in themselves the power to transform and 
transfigure our human life, have not broken loose and flooded our souls 
with their refreshing streams. The habit of prayer, and that alone, can 
correct all this, for it makes us cease to judge sensually and enables us 
to acquire the art of judging all things spiritually.[5]

The concluding words of St. Paul in the text cited above, namely, "we have 
the mind of Christ," perfectly express the result aimed at by the process 
of mental prayer. In all the varied forms which our intercourse with God 
necessarily assumes, the desire to acquire this mentality, the mentality of 
Jesus Christ, must act as a guiding and unifying principle.

We cannot flatter ourselves to have made any considerable progress in 
prayer until we have advanced in learning to think with God--understanding 
Him and His ways. We cannot be properly intimate with Him until this has 
taken place. The reason is obvious for one who studies ordinary human 
relationships. How constrained and artificial and labored are our 
conversations with those with whom we have little in common! How difficult 
it is to find satisfaction in the company of those who are completely out 
of sympathy with our attitude towards life! How often it is the lot of 
Catholics to meet with non-catholics--who are equipped with the ordinary 
human virtues, men who are fair minded, upright and trustworthy but who 
have no clear perception or understanding of the supernatural. A sincere 
Catholic, no matter how kindly disposed, will inevitably find intimacy with 
such persons extremely difficult if not impossible. No matter what apparent 
agreement there may be in many minor points there is really little or no 
common ground of understanding. This difficulty is intensified infinitely 
in our relations with God. Prayer is an intercourse or communing of the 
soul with God according to the words of St. Paul:--"Our conversation is in 
heaven; from whence we look for the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
will reform the body of our lowness, made like to the body of His glory, 
according to the operation whereby he is able to subdue all things unto 
himself."[6] "In my opinion," says St. Teresa, "prayer is only a friendly 
intercourse in which the soul converses alone with Him by Whom she knows 
she is loved."[7]

Now this personal intercourse cannot exist, or can exist but very 
imperfectly unless there is some common ground of understanding--some 
identity of thought and interests. For it must be remembered that, 
according to St. Thomas, prayer is an art of the reason, that is to say, it 
must have a basis in the intelligence. Growth in prayer is merely a growth 
in familiarity with God."

In all prayer there are two agents to be considered. There can be no 
converse with God unless the soul wants it and actually enters on it, and 
the soul cannot desire to pray or actually engage in prayer unless God is 
at hand. God is the principal agent, prompting the first desire of the soul 
for intercourse with Him; His Holy Spirit influences the intellect, awakens 
pious thoughts in the memory, arouses the imagination to develop and 
preserve these thoughts, draws the reason to examine religious truths and 
excites holy desires conformable to the thoughts He has inspired. Desiring 
more intensely to communicate Himself to the soul, than it could desire 
union with Him, He directs every effort it makes in its intercourse with 
Him. God's action does not exclude that of the soul. Diligent cooperation 
on its part is vitally necessary; the soul must petition God for the grace 
of prayer, and at the same time spare no pains to conform its thoughts and 
ways to those of God.

A very touching and intensely human incident in the Gospel illustrates all 
this, and carries us rapidly through the various stages of the intercourse 
of the soul with God, from its initial want of comprehension to the final 
illumination by which its ignorance of the divine is swept away. As the 
evening of the first Easter day was drawing to its close, two of the 
followers of Jesus of Nazareth left Jerusalem and directed their steps 
towards a small town about eight miles distant, called Emmaus. As was 
natural, their thoughts revolved around the tragic happenings of the 
previous days. Seeing nothing in these sad events but the frustration of 
all their hopes and the end of their ambitious dreams, they were plunged in 
gloom. Their state of mind is well portrayed in their own words: "but we 
hoped that it was He that should have redeemed Israel: and now besides all 
this, today is the third day since the settings were done."[9] Yet being 
unable to tear their thoughts away from what they had witnessed, they could 
speak of nothing else.

As they walked and talked, a stranger drew near, and being anxious to 
interchange their thoughts with another, they were glad when he came to 
share their company. "And it came to pass that while they talked and 
reasoned with themselves, Jesus Himself also, drawing near, went with 
them."[10] The disciples being asked by their new companion what it was that 
was the subject of their conversation, expressed surprise at any one being 
ignorant of the terrible scenes which Jerusalem had just witnessed. "And he 
said to them: what are these discourses that you hold one with another as 
you walk and are sad? And one of them, whose name was Cleophas, answering, 
said to him: art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the 
things that have been done there in these days?"[11] The stranger asked them 
to explain what they referred to, and straight away both proceeded to 
sketch the life of Him Whose followers they had been. He was a great 
prophet, mighty in word and work; they had expected great things of Him, 
for on His remarkable power they had based their hopes of the restoration 
and the freedom of Israel. And now all had ended in disillusionment and 
tragedy. The mighty worker of wonders was seized without difficulty by the 
priests and princes, and put to death without opposition. All was over. 
"And they said: concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet, mighty in 
word and work before God and all the people; and how our chief priests and 
princes delivered Him to be condemned to death and crucified Him: but we 
hoped that it was He that should have redeemed Israel."[12] It was true that 
some women asserted that He had arisen again from the dead, but that was a 
tale that had its origin in the overwrought imaginations of women, 
distracted by the cruel sufferings and death of the Jesus whom they loved. 
"Yea, and certain women also of our company affrighted us, who before it 
was light were at the sepulcher, and not finding His Body, came saying that 
they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he is alive."[13]

This story of the resurrection the disciples were not prepared to admit. It 
conflicted with their sense of what should be the normal development of the 
events of the three years that had just ended. Evasion of death they 
expected, but a death and resurrection did not fit into their habits of 
thought. Regarding Jesus, His life, His work and His life's purpose from a 
viewpoint that was to a large extent natural, and interpreting it from that 
viewpoint, they completely misjudged the life and misunderstood the Man. 
Their appreciation of the events of the last days of Holy Week, showed that 
they had never properly understood Him Whom they called their Lord and 
Master.

The stranger after having allowed them to express themselves fully on the 
subject that filled their thoughts, and having listened to them in silence 
to the end, began to speak in his turn. "Then He said to them: O foolish 
and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. 
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His 
glory?"[14] Taking their minds back over the Scriptures, He set before them 
contemplation after contemplation on the life, the character, the 
disposition and the sufferings of the Messias. As feature after feature was 
drawn for them, from the words of Moses and the Prophets, especially the 
great Isaias, they began to see, in the career of Him Whom they had 
followed, the fulfillment of each detail of the prophecies. At the same time 
they began to understand Jesus of Nazareth and grasp the inner meaning, the 
lesson, the purpose, of His life on earth. It became clear to them that His 
was not a life of purely human limitations. The Divine element in it began 
to show through for them. "And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, he 
expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things that were concerning 
him."[15]

At length it began to dawn upon them that the Redemption they looked for 
was to be sought not without but within--not in the emancipation of their 
persons from a political yoke, but in a subjection of their souls to the 
deifying influence of the Redeemer. As the true portrait of the Messias 
developed for them under the skillful hand of the Master Himself, their 
minds grew in understanding of, and their hearts began to glow with love of 
Him Whom they had so misunderstood. "Was not our heart," they said 
afterwards to one another, "burning within us, whistle spoke in the way and 
opened to us the Scriptures?"[16]

This walk and conversation with Jesus was mental prayer in its ordinary 
form. As will be seen further on, it sets before us vividly, if only in 
outline, the ordinary process through which the soul passes, as it grows in 
knowledge of Jesus. In considering this Scriptural illustration we should 
note that: (a) Jesus Himself drew near and went with them; (b) He led them 
to expose their thoughts and sentiments; (c) He was ingenious in 
facilitating intercourse and intimacy--He took the initiative. In a word, 
He was the quiet, powerful Master of the whole situation just as He is in 
prayer, if only the soul responds to His advances.

In the beginning the soul, attracted to Jesus by some impulse of grace, 
comes to Him, filled with natural thoughts and aspirations, and very 
ignorant of the supernatural. It understands neither God nor itself. It has 
few intimate relations with the Divinity outside of itself and within 
itself; but it begins to converse with Jesus. If it persists in the 
frequentation of His company the Lord gradually takes an ever-increasing 
share in the conversation, and begins to enlighten the soul. In its 
contemplation of the mysteries of faith, He aids it to penetrate beneath 
the words and facts and symbols, hitherto known but superficially, and to 
grasp the inner sense of the supernatural truths contained in these facts 
or words or symbols. The Scriptures are gradually opened to the soul. The 
well-known texts begin to acquire a new and deeper meaning. Familiar 
expressions convey a knowledge which the soul wonders never to have before 
discovered in them. All this new light is directed towards giving a fuller 
and more perfect comprehension of the mysteries of our faith, which are the 
mysteries of the life of Jesus. From this comprehension springs a love and 
sympathy with our Divine Lord. There is a growing desire for identification 
with Him. Union of thought and feeling begets intimacy and constant 
intercourse; the soul has a constant desire of conversing with Jesus about 
His interests and its own, which love has made identical. "Consider how 
great the happiness given to you," says St. John Chrysostom, "how wonderful 
the glory bestowed on you, in this that you can discourse to God, hold 
conversation with Christ, aspire after what you are inclined to, and ask 
for what is wanting to you."[17] The soul cannot consort with Jesus without 
ardently desiring to be like Him, and to liberate itself from whatever can 
place an obstacle to the freedom of their mutual relations. It conceives a 
distaste for all that tends to create in itself an unlikeness to Jesus. The 
constant and habitual aspiration of the soul, running as an undercurrent 
through all its communications with the Lord, is, to be freed from the 
shackles of all deliberate faults, even the very least, and to be filled 
with grace. "All our prayers," says St. Thomas, "ought to be directed to 
the obtaining of grace and glory."[18]

The soul, striving after this conformity with Him who has become its 
Friend, necessarily seeks to enter into and to develop in itself the 
fundamental and guiding disposition of the Friend's soul. That disposition 
is the disposition of sacrifice, or rather, a profound adoration of God 
finding its expression in sacrifice. The fundamental disposition of 
Christ's soul was one of absolute and loving subjection to God. Jesus 
Himself expressed this, saying: "For I do always the things that please 
Him."[19] Prayer is a means to the acquisition and cultivation of the spirit 
of sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Now, when God finds this disposition in the 
soul, He hastens to communicate to it a participation more and more 
abundant of that Divine life of which the soul of Jesus is a limitless 
ocean. Thus is realized the purpose of Christ's Incarnation: "I am come," 
He said, "that they may have life, and have it more abundantly".[20] To the 
reception of this life all prayer must be directed: "This chiefly we must 
seek in prayer," says St. Thomas, "namely, to be united to God."[21]

The ascension of the soul then, is, through prayer to the acquisition of 
the spirit of sacrifice, and thence to union with God especially through 
the Holy Communion. "The Blessed Eucharist", says Cardinal Billot, "is the 
chief means that God has ordained for imparting the divine life to the 
soul. That outpouring of divine life is proportioned to the dispositions of 
the soul that receives it. The more perfectly the soul has entered into the 
dispositions of Jesus, the more closely it has become akin to Him in taste 
and outlook, the more abundant is the reception of the divine life that in 
its plenitude resides in Jesus."[22] Prayer, Spirit of Jesus developed by 
mental prayer, Communion--that is the order. This is perfectly exemplified 
in the incident cited from the Gospel. At first the disciples failed to 
recognize Jesus. After conversation with Him their faith was purified, 
their devotion to Him grew and they at length understood and entered into 
the meaning and spirit of His life and Passion. He saith to them: "O 
foolish and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have 
spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and so enter into 
His glory?"[23] And then they understood and accepted the principle of 
sacrifice for Him and for themselves, as the sole means to that redemption 
which is of the soul, not of the body. They had dreamed of a redemption 
that was wholly political and external, one which changed their worldly 
status, leaving themselves unchanged. Now they understood redemption as 
something wholly internal and spiritual, liberating them from the yoke of 
their own fallen nature and giving their souls the regal condition of the 
sonship of God. The imparting of grace, not the bestowal of earthly 
position, they now understood to be the object of Christ's relations with 
them. But the end was not yet. All this was a preparation for something 
further. "And it came to pass whilst he was at table with them, He took 
bread, and blessed and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened 
and they knew Him."[24] With the reception of the sacred Host, came an inflow 
of Divine grace into their souls and their final illumination.

Having sketched in outline the nature and aim of prayer in its fundamental 
character, it remains to point out the different forms which it takes, to 
show that growth in the habit of prayer is the same as the development in 
spirituality, to expose the usual temptations and difficulties which the 
soul experiences in the cultivation of the interior life, to describe the 
route which progress in this life follows, to explain the ordinary 
mechanism (if the word be permitted) by which the intercourse with God is 
maintained, and finally to disclose the obstacles that impede, as well as 
the conditions that help advancement.

1. Phil. ii. 5.

2. Prayer is mental when the thoughts and affections of the soul are not 
expressed in a previously determined formula. All prayer ought to 
participate to some extent in the nature of mental prayer because acts of 
mind and will are always necessary. The ideas touched on in this paragraph 
are developed in "The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena," Vol. I, chap. 
xxxvi. (Ed. Hurtaud).

3. Isaias lv. 8--9.  

4. I Cor. ii 11-16.

5. The religious state of the average soul at the beginning of its 
conversion and prior to its initiation into the interior life, is aptly set 
forth in the following passage from Newman. "In our condition as average 
Christians . . . we know that God's service is perfect freedom, not a 
servitude, but this it is in the case of those who have long served Him, at 
first it is a kind of servitude, it is a task till our likings and tastes 
come to be in union with those which God has sanctioned . . . 'The servant 
knoweth not what his lord doth' (John xv. 15). The servant is not in his 
lord's confidence, does not understand what he is aiming at, or why he 
commands this and forbids that. . . . Such is the state of those who begin 
religious obedience. They do not see anything come of their devotional or 
penitential exercises, nor do they take pleasure in them; they are obliged 
to defer to God's word simply because it is His word. . . . We must begin 
religion with what looks like a form. Our fault will be, not in beginning 
it as a form, but in continuing as a form. It Is our duty to be ever 
striving and praying to enter into the real spirit of our services, and in 
proportion as we understand them, they will cease to be a form and a task 
and will be the real expression of our minds. Thus shall we be gradually 
changed in heart from servants into sons of almighty God." Parochial 
Sermons. Vol. iii Sermon 7.

6. Phil. iii. 20-21.

7. "Life." Ch. viii. St. Thomas quoting St. John Damascene, says that 
prayer is an ascent or an approach of the mind to God. ii. ii. Q. 83. a. 17 
ad 2. St. Gregory Nazianzen says that prayer is a conference or 
conversation of the soul with God. "De. Or. Dom." 1. According to St. John 
Chrysostom it is a discoursing with the Divine Majesty. Hom. 30 in Gen. St. 
Augustine speaks of it as an affectionate turning of the mind to God. 
"Serm." ix. 3.

8. (a) The conformity or harmony of will between the soul and God is a 
conformity of the human will as enlightened by reason and faith. It doth 
not exclude an actual opposing in to the Divine on the part of men's lower 
or sensitive nature. (b) St. Thomas says the function of friendship with 
God is to bring about that men should incline to the same things as God. He 
quotes with approval Aristotle, saying . "One of the features of friendship 
is that friends should have a liking for and choose the same things."

9. St. Luke xxiv. 21.

10. St. Luke xxiv. 15.

11. St. Luke xxiv. 17-18.

12. St. Luke xxiv. 19, 20, 21.

13. St. Luke xxiv. 22, 23.

14. St. Luke xxiv. 25, 26.

15. St. Luke xxiv. 27. 

16. St. Luke xxiv. 32.

17. "Considera quanta est tibi concessa felicitas, quanta gloria attributa 
orationibus fabulari cum Deo, cum christo miscere colloquia, optare 
quovelis, quod desideras postulare." St. Chrysostom quoted by St. Thomas, 
II. II. Q. 83. a. 2, 3.

18. "Quia omnes orationes nostrae ordinari debent ad gratiam et gloriam 
consequendam." St. Th. II. II. Q. 83. a. 4 c.

19. "Quae placita sunt ei facio semper. St. John viii. 29.

20. St. John x. 10.

21. "Quia hoc praecipue est in oratione petendum ut Deo uniamur." St. Th. 
II. II. Q. 83. a. 1, ad 2

22. "De Eccllesiae Sacramentis." Vo1. I. p. 94. Editio quinta.

23. St. Luke xxiv. 25-26.

24. St. Luke xxiv. 30-31.


CHAPTER II: PERSEVERANCE IN PRAYER

"My heart hath said to Thee, I have sought Thy face. Thy face, O Lord I 
will seek." Ps. xxvi. 7.

Without prayer salvation is impossible. To neglect it is to neglect the 
only means given us to remain in touch with Almighty God; if we lose hold 
of Him we necessarily fall back upon ourselves, and in ourselves we can 
find nothing that can advance us towards eternal life. Everything that 
appertains to that must come to us from God. Every gift in the supernatural 
order is an effect of His bounty, "for every best gift and every perfect 
gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights."[1] God has 
ordained that these gifts be given to us on condition of our valuing them, 
desiring them and petitioning Him humbly for them. He says to us: "Ask and 
you shall receive." This implies--"if you do not ask you shall not 
receive." We do not beg except for what we prize highly and are desirous of 
possessing. There is no true prayer where there is not a real longing for 
the things pertaining to the development of the spiritual life. All that 
tends to impart, to strengthen, to develop and perfect that life, are the 
gifts which God is prepared to give the soul, if the soul nourishes in 
itself a holy desire for them, acknowledges its need of them, and confesses 
its dependence on God for them.

The most necessary resolution for one that wishes to draw near to God and 
to grow in intimacy with Him, the resolution that embraces and involves all 
the others, is that of persevering in prayer in spite of all the 
difficulties and trials to be met with in it.[2] For though it is true that 
prayer is supernatural, "for no man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy 
Ghost,"[3] still the habit of prayer is fixed and strengthened and developed 
in much the same way as natural habits are formed and developed in us. It 
depends, therefore, for its firmness and force on our own diligence, 
knowledge and industry, aided of course as is always to be understood, by 
the grace of God.

It is an entirely mistaken notion to think that the gift of prayer is 
something which in no wise depends upon us, but is altogether God-given. 
Prayer, it is to be emphatically stated, does not 'happen' to us; we do not 
'contract' spirituality as people contract a disease--by accident. Such a 
view fosters spiritual sloth, by which the soul excuses itself for not 
entering into relations with God on the grounds that it feels no taste of 
inclination towards such intercourse and waits until God imparts this 
devotional taste before beginning.

Again it is certain that the power to pray is a grace; but this grace is 
infallibly given if we on our side fulfill the conditions required of us. 
Our cooperation is necessary. We must not wait until influenced by pious 
sentiments or emotions, or driven by necessity to address ourselves to God. 
These pious feelings are not of the essence of prayer. We must be so 
trained in the exercise of the divine converse, that we can approach God 
with as much constancy when we feel a positive distaste for the 
supernatural as when carried away by an access of sensible devotion. We 
must learn to speak to God independently of our tastes and feelings. The 
difficulty in prayer is not in prayer itself. It all comes from our want of 
decision in electing definitely to find our unique satisfaction of mind, 
will and imagination in the supernatural and in definitely renouncing the 
tendency to seek in the natural world any form of satisfaction that does 
not lead to God. If we are strong enough and resolute enough to choose God 
as the term not of some, but of all our activity, if we are resolute enough 
not to be continually oscillating between Him and creatures, prayer is 
easy. As regards petition, there is no difficulty in asking for what we 
like.[4] The whole world is daily occupied in that. Most deputations are 
concerned with it. It is the characteristic action of childhood. But there 
is a real difficulty in liking what we, as children of God, should ask for. 
Naturally we have no taste for the things of the spiritual life. It is 
intelligible that we should be very half-hearted in our petitions for what 
we do not strongly desire. We are not prone to be very insistent in our 
demands for what we are not very eager to have. Of course, Christians as a 
rule are not conscious of this distaste for the supernatural. They 
sincerely believe that they are quite earnestly beseeching God for the 
things of eternal life. There is a certain amount of unconscious self-
deception in this matter. The petition for the things of eternal life is 
accompanied very often, in fact most frequently, by a keen desire of, and 
longing for things that are an impediment to that life. One desire, of 
necessity, negatives, at least partially, the other and renders it to some 
extent illusory. If what is actually longed for is in contradiction with 
the life of grace or opposed to its development, the prayer for the things 
of the spirit is but an idle formula, a complete self-delusion. The 
cherishing in the soul of desires incompatible with the longing for God, is 
the secret of the vast number of failures in the spiritual life.[5] Of the 
many that embark on the interior life, few, comparatively, succeed. The 
reason lies in this, that they have never resolutely chosen God to the 
rejection of all else beside, or that having once made the choice, they 
afterwards allow themselves to develop likings that impede or conflict with 
the growth of God's life in the soul. They allow themselves to drift into 
choosing other things as well as God. This inevitably tends to not choosing 
God at all. Many will plead that they find the spiritual life a difficulty, 
because they find prayer a difficulty. The truth is that men begin to find 
prayer a difficulty when they have begun to find God a difficulty. This 
comes when God has ceased to interest them because other things have begun 
to interest them more.[6] The essential condition of success in the spiritual 
life is to train oneself "to want" God and to school oneself "not to want" 
what does not lead to Him. Hence it is that St. Catherine of Siena in her 
"Dialogue," stresses so much the necessity of stirring up and nourishing in 
the soul this holy desire.[7]

1. St. James i. 17.

2. Cf. "Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena." God the Father speaking to the 
Saint says: " Know, my daughter, that it is by persevering in prayer that 
is humble, incessant and full of faith, that all the virtues are acquired 
by the soul It ought, then, to persevere and never to allow itself to be 
forced to give up, either by the illusions of the devil or by its own 
frailty, that is, by the thoughts that harass it, nor by the restlessness 
of the body, nor by the talk that the devil puts in the mouths of men, 
to turn the soul from prayer." 

3. I Cor. xiii. 3. cf. Ss. Theol. II. II. Q. 83. a. 13 c. 

4. Prayer of Petition is prayer in the most restricted and precise sense. 
St. Thomas referring to petition says: "Prayer is a certain manifestation 
of the human will," and again: "Prayer is a certain unfolding of our will 
to God that He may fulfill it." III. Q. 21. a. 1.

5. St. John of the Cross develops the importance of mortifying our desires 
in the "Ascent, Book I.

6. Cf. Ss. Th. II. II. Q. 35. a. I and 2, which articles treat of this 
state of soul.

7. "Dialogue" Vol. I, chap. 36.


CHAPTER III: VOCAL PRAYER

"All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord." Dan. iii. 57.

There are two distinct ways in which the soul presents itself before its 
Creator; that is, there are two distinct types of prayer, namely, vocal and 
mental. Now, though a mental attention either to the meaning of what we are 
saying, or to the Person we are addressing, is required, in order that the 
formulae we utter with our lips merit the name of prayer, there is, 
nevertheless, a fundamental difference in the nature and the purpose and 
the effects of these two modes of communicating with God.

The word prayer is derived from the most characteristic act of this 
exercise, that is, petition. All our dealings with God must have a 
background of pleading in them; a note of entreaty must run through the 
varied movements of the soul towards its God. There is always one ultimate 
object which is aimed at in the converse of men with God, and to this 
object all others must be subordinated; that is, that God communicate 
Himself to His creatures in this life as a preparation for union in the 
next. We are indigent before God; we need everything and He alone can give 
us what we want. If we had not fallen, our utterances would mainly consist 
of words of praise and adoration and worship. And though now, as has been 
said, there is an element of petition always present in our intercourse 
with God, yet praise, adoration and thanksgiving; are still the most 
characteristic functions of prayer when it is vocal. For this reason it has 
to be more formal than mental prayer. In the latter the operation is more 
personal and intimate. In the former, God is the direct object of our acts. 
In mental prayer we can have our own soul and its states as the object on 
which will or understanding is exercised. Though people pray vocally in 
private, yet it is characteristic of, and usual for vocal prayer to be 
recited in common. Vocal prayer is always to a certain degree a public act, 
and as such is something that is done to honor and reverence God. Of 
course prayers in common are often recited, as in times of calamity, to 
express repentance, to plead for mercy, to placate God's justice or to 
obtain His blessings. But the distinctive function of vocal prayer remains 
that of honoring, reverencing and worshipping God.

The most sublime form of vocal prayer is the Divine Office. This is formed 
of language inspired for the most part by the Holy Ghost Himself to give 
expression to the thoughts that should animate all created supernaturalised 
intelligences in the presence of the great Lord of all. The ideas contained 
in the Psalms and the words in which they are clothed are such as man, were 
he a perfect child of God, would use to give expression to his admiration, 
love, reverence and esteem for his heavenly Father. The holy Pope Pius X, 
quoting Saint Augustine, writes: "That God might be praised in a fitting 
manner by man, God Himself composed the praises of Himself. And because God 
deigned to praise Himself, man found the terms in which to sound God's 
praises."[1] The Psalms are, therefore, a divine composition which God's 
servants are to repeat in His presence to honor Him. In doing this they 
stand in a relation to God similar to that of the beatified who ever stand 
before His throne honoring Him by heavenly canticles. God desires that we 
should deal with Him much in the same manner as that in which we deal with 
one another. It is our custom at school, for instance, when we wish to 
honor a distinguished guest, to have passages from some famous author 
declaimed, or musical pieces from a great composer performed in the 
presence of him whom we wish to honor. In a somewhat similar manner the 
Holy Ghost has inspired for us the praises which we are to recite or chant 
before God to honor Him.

The nature of public vocal prayer demands that we acquit ourselves of it 
with great reverence and respect; our every gesture, tone and attitude must 
be made to signify the honor we wish to pay to the Great Being in whose 
presence we are. For the merit and perfection of our act it is not demanded 
that we should necessarily advert to the meaning of the words we use; if 
the whole action is directed towards God, if we realize that the formulae 
we use are in themselves eminently pleasing to Him, and if from the 
beginning we form the intention of acquitting ourselves well of the duty we 
are undertaking, the whole function is meritorious and pleasing to God whom 
we honor.[2] Any subsequent distraction or want of attention, as long as it 
is indeliberate, does not destroy the initial intention. This intention 
extends its influence over the whole multitude of acts which constitute the 
service.

The monastic choir is as a stage arranged before the King of heaven a stage 
on which those who recite the Divine Office should endeavor to execute 
with great expression and feeling, attention and perfection, those chants 
in honor of God, composed by the Divine Spirit. Those who recite the 
Divine Office should remember their role in the divine drama. It is that of 
the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, the Church, w hose inmost thoughts and 
feelings, whose mystical life, whose states of soul and whose love and 
devotion to God the Father, the divine hymns express in terms of wonderful 
variety and perfection. The Divine Office differs from all other vocal 
prayers. It is the official utterance of the Spouse of Christ, whose 
accents exercise an unparalleled influence over the heart of God. "The 
Church by her faith, her confidence, her love and her union with Jesus, 
annihilates the distance that separates her from God and chants His praise 
like the Word in the Bosom of the Trinity. She, united with Christ, sings 
the very praises of God under the eyes of God."[3]

What has been said of the Divine Office is true in its degree and measure 
of all vocal prayer. In every case there is a recital of a formula, 
composed nearly always by a person different from him who prays. It does 
not necessarily express the disposition of soul of the person employing the 
formula; if it be an approved prayer, it voices sentiments, thoughts and 
emotions which are in themselves pleasing to God. Of course the more 
perfectly one identifies oneself with the thoughts expressed in these 
recited formulae, the higher the value of the prayer. But it is clear from 
what has been said that in the form of address one stands on a more formal 
and distant relationship with Almighty God, than in the case of mental 
prayer.[4]

The effect of vocal prayer upon the soul varies with the stage of 
development the soul has reached in the spiritual life. For those who do 
not lead an interior life, the role of such prayer is restricted to 
exciting a sense of the supernatural and a sense of the duty of raising the 
mind to God; for those advanced in the spiritual life, the liturgical 
prayers are of a sovereign efficacy for bringing their souls into union 
with the intellectual illuminations and affective impulses of the Holy 
Spirit. The prayers and chants of Holy Church become for such souls the 
natural and spontaneous outlet in which the pent up emotions of the heart 
acquired in mental prayer find due expression.[5]

To acquit ourselves perfectly of vocal prayer, it is necessary to raise to 
God our mind by attention, our heart by devotion, and our will by 
submission. These dispositions deliberately stirred up in the soul at the 
beginning will color the whole exercise, in spite of distractions. Actual 
attention all the time is not vital. Our prayer is meritorious and obtains 
its effect provided we begin with an attention that is not afterwards 
retracted by any voluntary distraction. Of course actual attention the 
whole way through is to be aimed at, for ii gives additional force and 
efficacy to our words.[6] We should make it a point to begin well, by 
deliberately putting ourselves in the presence of God, and by withdrawing 
our powers from outward things, recollecting them in ourselves and fixing 
them on God. If distractions come, we must aim at having all our 
distractions turn on Divine things; this we can do by learning to view all 
things in God's light. The power to do so is the direct effect of the 
cultivation of the habit of mental prayer.

1. "Divine Afflatu."

2. God the Father speaking to St. Catherine of Siena says:--"The soul must 
not separate vocal from mental prayer; while it pronounces the words, let 
it strive to lift up its thoughts and direct them towards my love: to this 
let it unite the consideration, in general, of its faults and of the 
precious Blood of my Son, in which she may recognize the bountifulness of 
my charity and the remission of its sins.---"Dialogue": Vol. I, chap. 36.

3. Cf. Marmion. "Christ the Ideal of the Monk." Chap. xiii, Part iii, p. 
299. The public prayer of the Church is in very truth the prayer of Christ. 
Sharing as we do in His life, forming but one body in Him, we become His 
instruments, by which He can praise God. If we place ourselves wholly at 
His disposal, it is He who prays in us, with us, by us. Thus we become one 
in a very full sense with the eternal Praise and glory of His Father.

4. A recollected bearing, a reverential attitude and a becoming posture are 
demanded for the due acquittal of vocal prayer. When vocal prayers are 
recited in common, the exercise should be marked by something of the 
decorum and dignity that surrounds the choral recitation of the Divine 
Office. Such an exercise should always be begun with the express intention 
that God should receive thereby a due measure of honor and worship.

5. The soul is turned into the fire of love and therefore every word is 
like a spark rising from a fire inflaming and enlightening the powers of 
the soul, that she listeth ever to pray and do nothing else. And the body, 
is an instrument, and a trumpet of the soul in which the soul bloweth sweet 
notes of spiritual prayers to God. Hilton. "Scale of Perfection." C. 12.

6. The words of St. Thomas, marked as usual by clarity as well as wisdom 
are to be quoted in this connection. "Now prayer has three effects. The 
first is common to all acts informed by Charity, and this is merit. In 
order to realize this effect, it is not necessary that prayer should be 
attentive throughout, because the vigor of the original intention with 
which one begins to pray makes the whole prayer meritorious, as is the case 
with other meritorious acts. The second effect of prayer is proper to it 
alone, and consists in impetration: and again the original intention, to 
which God looks chiefly, suffices to obtain this effect. But if the 
original intention is absent, prayer lacks both merit and impetration: 
because as Gregory says ("Moral" xxii.) "God hears not the prayer of those 
who have no intention of praying." The third effect of prayer is one which 
it produces immediately; this is the spiritual refreshment of the mind and 
for this effect attention is a necessary condition: wherefore St. Paul 
writes: (I Cor. xiv. 14): 'If I pray in a tongue . . . my understanding is 
without fruit.'

"It must be noted however that there are three kinds of attention that can 
be brought to vocal prayer: one which watches the words, lest we say them 
wrong, another which attends to the sense of the words, and a third which 
aims at the end of prayer, namely, God and to the thing we are praying for. 
This last kind of attention is most necessary and even the untutored are 
capable of it." (IIa. IIae. Q. 83. 2. 13.)


CHAPTER IV: THE ORDINARY PROCESS OF MENTAL PRAYER

"I am the way; no one cometh to the Father but by Me." John xiv. 6.

Mental Prayer is an ascent or approach of the mind to God. It is nothing 
else than a communing of spirit with spirit, a communing of the created 
intelligence with the uncreated. To pray, therefore, it is necessary to be 
present with God. When we wish to enter into conversation with our friends 
on earth, we leave the place in which we are and transport ourselves to 
where they are or make use of those means of communication invented by 
science. No use of a medium of communication or change of position on our 
part would seem to be necessary when it is question of coming into the 
presence of God, since He is everywhere, and in Him we live, move and have 
our being. Yet, strange to say, though we are surrounded by, and, as it 
were, enveloped in God, still we can fail to have Him present to us. For a 
spirit makes other beings to be present to it not by local movement but by 
its acts. Our soul has present to it only those objects about which its 
faculties are engaged. We can be said to be present only there, where our 
thoughts, affections or imaginings are. It is in the very same way we are 
present with God. We are in God's presence only during the time when the 
faculties of our soul are exercised about Him or His attributes or in 
something that has a bearing on our relations with Him. The meaning 
therefore, of having placed ourselves in God's presence--of our mind having 
ascended to Him--is that God has become for us an object of loving, or at 
least interested, thought. This imports as its correlative aspect, the 
withdrawal of our imagination and our senses, our will and our intellect, 
with the acts that flow from them, from all objects other than God.[1]

We are in a real sense present where that object is which occupies our 
imagination--more truly present where it is than where we may happen to be 
locally. A familiar illustration may be drawn from a too common experience 
in a teacher's life. The indifferent and distracted student is bodily 
present in the class-room, but his surroundings and the teacher's words 
make no impression on him as he allows his thoughts and interests to wander 
to the joys of home or the excitement of the playing fields. He is, in a 
human sense, more present where his thoughts and affections are than where 
he is in body.

God is a pure spirit--and we are not. We cannot come into His presence as 
an angel can. All the acts of our intellect depend on the senses and on the 
imagination. We must have some imaginative image of a thing in order to be 
able to think on it. It is difficult for us to form an image of the 
Divinity and therefore difficult for us to be present with God. At least it 
would be very difficult for us, had not God in His kindness, found a way by 
which access to Him, by aid of the imagination, might be made easy for men. 
That way was the Incarnation.

The Divinity is made present visibly and tangibly to us in the Humanity of 
Our Lord: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we 
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have 
handled, of the word of life; for the life was manifested; and we have seen 
and do bear witness and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with 
the Father, and hath appeared to us."[2] Our Lord shadows forth in a visible 
manner the perfection of God--His goodness, His benignity, His holiness, 
His mercy. Those attributes in a pure spirit we should have found very 
difficult to imagine or conceive. As clothed in, and expressing themselves 
through the Sacred Humanity these attributes of God are become accessible 
to human imagination as well as to human thought. Jesus is the spotless 
mirror of the Divinity. Therefore, the study of the life of Jesus and His 
works--the contemplation of His humanity--forms the imaginative ground-work 
from which the soul forms to itself the spiritual concept of God. 
"Everything in Jesus is not only saintly but sanctifying also, and imprints 
itself on the souls which apply themselves to the consideration of it, if 
they do so with good dispositions. His humility makes us humble; His purity 
purifies us; His poverty, His patience, His sweetness and His other virtues 
imprint themselves on those who contemplate them. This may take place 
without our reflecting at all upon ourselves, but simply by our viewing 
these virtues in Jesus with esteem, admiration, respect, love and 
complacency."[3]

Hence it is that our communion with God, the presence of our spirit with 
His, is accomplished through the Sacred Humanity. Therefore, the ordinary 
way of mental prayer or meditation[4] is the reviewing in our imagination and 
in our intelligence the life and words of Jesus.

This however is only one part of prayer--it does not end with 
considerations or reflections, for prayer in its essence is not a mere 
reflection on a subject belonging to the order of divine things. "It is a 
supernatural attitude of the soul before its Creator in which it directs 
itself towards God and unites itself with Him, for the purpose of rendering 
Him what is due to Him from His creatures, receiving in turn His 
communications and rendering itself pleasing in His sight."[5] The 
considerations--that is, the meditation strictly so called--have an 
ultimate purpose. That purpose is to create in our minds a form or an ideal 
of life and action, an ideal which is presented by our intelligence to our 
will, as our highest good. Our considerations, therefore, must tend to 
form, deepen and strengthen the conviction that the life of the Man-God is 
the good life for us, that His way of acting and thinking is what Is most 
deserving of our imitation. Meditation has for its object to fill our minds 
with the conviction that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that is 
to say, to fill us with the conviction that our life is a false and vain 
one in so far as it does not conform to the spirit of His; that His values 
of human things are the only true values; that to attain the goal of 
existence we must follow the path He has traced and be guided by His 
principles; and finally, that it is only by making His modes of thought, 
affection, and action our own that we shall enjoy the life that is truly 
life.[6] The will necessarily moves with love towards that which the 
intelligence presents to it as its good. The study of the attractiveness of 
Jesus creates in the will the desire of conformity with Him and the 
practice of the virtues exemplified in His life.

There is only one humanity that is united of itself to the Divinity; that 
is the Humanity of Jesus, for it is united hypostatically. If w e are to be 
united intimately with the Divinity it is necessary for us to prepare the 
way for that union by becoming assimilated to that Humanity. How is this 
done ? By assimilating ourselves to Jesus in thought, in affections, in 
principles and in ideals--i.e. by reproducing in our life the features of 
His human Life. This paves the way for vital union with the Divinity that 
is in Jesus. This union with the Divinity grows in proportion to the 
increase of sanctifying grace in the soul. The ordinary channel for the 
communication of this grace of Christ is the Sacraments. These confer 
greater or lesser grace as the dispositions of the soul resemble to a 
greater or lesser degree the dispositions of the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. 
Therefore our considerations in prayer are meant to set before our will as 
an object to venerate, to admire, to love and to imitate, the ideal of 
human life portrayed in the life of Jesus on earth. Our prayer must inspire 
us with the desire to shape our actions after the model set up by the 
Savior as the means to union with God. We must be attracted to the 
loveliness of God by the loveliness of Jesus. God is the supreme and 
ultimate good, and everything else, even virtue, is good only in as much as 
it leads to the possession of Him.

Of course God reveals Himself to us in the works of creation, and from the 
contemplation of these, we can acquire a certain knowledge of the 
greatness, of the power, of the beauty and perfection of God, and with the 
light of revelation to help we could develop in ourselves a kind of 
personal regard for the Author of all created things. But this drawing 
towards God could with difficulty attain to the nature of love; it would 
remain strongly impregnated with fear and awe: its most perfect expression 
would be reverence--the reverence of the creature devoted to its Creator. 
Hence it was that those who lived under the old dispensation scarcely knew 
God as a Father; for all created things are limited and imperfect, and 
therefore generate but a very imperfect notion of God; they tend to 
generate even a false one on account of the weakness of will and intellect 
that followed on the fall. This was the reason why even the chosen people 
had such a proneness to idolatry--a thing which many find very difficult to 
understand. But in our Lord's life the attributes of God are reflected 
without the slightest shadow of imperfection and in all their lovableness. 
His sacred Humanity reveals God to us in a most attractive form and it 
becomes possible for us to love God and desire to be united with Him, this 
being the end of prayer, as it is the end of all our relations with God.

There can be union only between beings that are alike; to be united with 
God we must be like Him, assimilated to Him, conformed in the passions and 
affections of our humanity to the passions and affections of that Humanity 
which He made His own. That Humanity is the bridge of union between Him and 
us. The function of mental prayer, then, as an act of our mind, is to study 
and contemplate the features of the life of Jesus Christ with a view to 
reproducing the traits of that life in ourselves and so disposing ourselves 
to growth in the divine life of grace. When we have made progress in this 
contemplation it is possible for us to fix our gaze on created things, on 
the world itself and the events that take place in it--and that without 
danger to ourselves. For the Sacred Humanity has rectified our ideas about 
all created things and in Its light we can study creatures without fear of 
being led astray by them. When the mind has attained the view-point of 
Jesus Christ, distraction in prayer does not normally turn the soul from 
God, for every object that comes before the mind, every work, every event, 
is instinctively reviewed in the relation in which it stands to Him, and 
all will therefore (though at times insensibly) lead the mind back to God.

So far there has been question only of the soul's acts in prayer. These, 
however, do not constitute the whole of this exercise. Prayer has been 
defined as a familiar intercourse or conversation with God. It is a being 
present with God and associating with Him, as we associate with those we 
love on earth. Now two spirits cannot be present to each other, since such 
presence is by means of acts, without strongly influencing each other. In 
this intercourse the activity is not all one sided; it is not wholly on our 
side. The Divine Spirit is operative as well as the human. God incessantly 
plays His part and this is an active one. A conversation is not a speech 
delivered before a person, it involves an interchange of thought; and as 
our thought is directed towards God, so God's thought is directed towards 
us.

God is intensely operative and if the soul has willed to draw near to God, 
He on His side, tends to draw near to it. The effect of the contact of two 
spirits is one of assimilation, i.e. one is made like the other. The soul 
by its activity cannot assimilate God to itself, for God cannot change; the 
activity of God therefore is directed towards assimilating the soul to 
Himself. God therefore takes up the soul and assimilates it to Himself, and 
this in proportion as the soul by its own acts, helped by grace, abdicates 
itself and lives the life of God by acting habitually and intensely under a 
motive of faith and of charity. When the soul attains to the point of 
practically always acting not merely under a habitual or virtual, but an 
actual motive of faith,[7] it has already arrived at an advanced stage in the 
life of ordinary prayer; for this conscious assumption of all its 
activities under a rule or principle of faith makes its prayer continuous, 
uninterrupted and unceasing. The actuality and vividness of the faith 
clears the soul's activity of the influence of self, and accordingly God's 
influence enters to an ever higher degree into such activities. Persons who 
live this life of faith in a sustained manner carry about with them an air 
of the divine easily perceptible by those with whom they come in contact. 
There is nothing which helps more to foster and develop this life of faith 
than the habit of seeing the will of God in all things even the most 
insignificant, in the petty trials, disappointments, checks and even in the 
pleasures and satisfactions that come our way.

Thus habitual prayer demands an habitual sense of God's presence--demands, 
which is more accurate, God being continually present to us. Now there are 
different and varying degrees of presence of persons, one with another. In 
a social gathering many people are assembled in the same room within easy 
reach of one another. All are bodily present in the same place. As is often 
the case, those who are assembled together in great social gatherings come 
as strangers one to another. The vast majority of them meet, perhaps, for 
the first time. What happens is that each looks around in the assembly for 
the few with whom he is on terms of acquaintanceship or friendship, and 
engages in conversation with these. For the group thus formed the others 
are as if they were not there at all. The friends that meet and converse 
are present to one another; they are present to themselves but not to the 
others, and this presence deepens in the degree in which their conversation 
springs from a common interest or causes a deepening of mutual 
understanding. The more their mutual interests and tastes lead to an active 
interchange of thoughts and views and to a strengthening of the bonds that 
bind them together, the deeper grows the presence. If again one of the 
guests takes the lead in the conversation and all the others dominated by 
his personality cease to speak and give themselves to the task of 
listening, the speaker becomes present to everybody in the room, but not 
everybody to him--those only are present to him who have led him on to 
conversation, and interest in whom, incites him to speak.

So it is, in a measure, in our relations with God. We have already seen 
that mere bodily presence before the tabernacle, or mere recitation of 
formulae does not constitute God present to us; for that, it is needful 
that the powers of our soul be occupied with God and with the things of 
God. Now in prayer there is reciprocal action, prayer is a conversation. It 
is as essential a part of mental prayer that God should address Himself to 
us, as that we should address our- selves to Him.[8] He speaks to us through 
the deepening of our faith, through the illumination He supplies to our 
intelligence, to the penetration into the mysteries of our religion that He 
grants us, and through the impulse to good that He gives to our wills. He 
speaks to us above all, by the life and actions of Jesus Christ--these are 
"His Word" to us--His Own "Word." "God Who, at sundry times and in divers 
manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all, 
in these days, hath spoken to us by His Son, Whom He hath appointed Heir of 
all things, by whom also He made the World, Who being the brightness of His 
glory, and the figure of His substance, sitteth on the right hand of the 
majesty on High."[9]  We become present with God by having present in 
thoughts, affection and in imagination the life of Jesus. We associate with 
and converse with God by associating and conversing in spirit with Jesus. 
He Himself said: "Philip, he that seeth me, seeth the Father also."[10] God 
on His side mingles familiarly with our life and its concerns, through and 
in the life of His Word on earth. He communicates His light and His Life to 
us through Him. Jesus is the channel of the communication of divine grace. 
Prayer consists in living with and conversing with Jesus with a view to 
becoming like to Him. Prayer is literally the instrument of a transforming 
process by which we leave our own form and put on the form of The Son of 
Man. The function of prayer consists in stripping us of earthly desires: 
"Stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the 
new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that 
created him."[11] The following words from the autobiography of St. Teresa 
form a fitting conclusion to the chapter. "By thought we can put ourselves 
in the presence of Christ, set ourselves gradually aflame by a great love 
for the Sacred Humanity, keep company with Him at all times, speak to Him, 
recommend our needs to Him, seek compassion from Him in our trials, rejoice 
with Him in our consolations, keep ourselves from forgetting Him in times 
of prosperity. Let us not seek to make beautiful speeches to Him; but 
rather speak simply to express our desires and wants. This is an excellent 
method and makes us advance in a very short time. The person who studies 
how to live in this precious company and draws there- from a genuine love 
for the Master who has showered so many benefits upon us, that person, I 
assert, has gone forward in the way of prayer. So that we must not grow 
disconsolate, as I have already said, if the feeling of devotion is 
lacking. Let us rather give thanks to Our Lord, Who despite the 
imperfections in our works, keeps alive within us the desire of pleasing 
Him.

"This method of prayer, which consists in keeping oneself in the company of 
the Savior, is profitable at every stage. It is a very certain means of 
progressing in the first degree of prayer and of reaching the second in a 
short time. And in the last stages it serves as a protection against the 
temptations of the devil.''[12] 

1. Ven. Libermann, "Ecrits Spirituels," p. 82. no. 2.

2. I Jonn i. 1-2.

3. Faber. "Bethlehem," chap. i. Quoted ftom Rigoleuc "L'Homme d'Oraison p. 
35.

4. The word "meditation" is used to designate that kind of mental prayer in 
which the considerations of the mind are very prominent and prolonged, in 
this case the name of the first and most salient part is given to the 
whole.

5. Ven. Libermann, Ecrits Spirituels," p. 294.

6. I Tim. vi. 19.

7. This means an actual intention at the beginning of each small series of 
acts.

8. St. Francis de Sales says: "Prayer is a colloquy, a discourse or a 
conversation of the soul with God, by it we speak to God and He again 
speaks to us; we aspire to Him and breathe in Him, and He reciprocally 
inspires us and breathes in us." (Treatise on Love of God, Vl.)

St. Vincent de Paul says: " Prayer is a conversation of the soul with God, 
an intercourse of the spirit in which God teaches it in an interior way 
what it should know and do and in which the soul says to God what He 
Himself teaches it to ask for." (Conf. on Prayer, 1648.)

Abbot Marmion, speaking of prayer says: "In a conversation one both 
listens and speaks. The soul gives itself up to God and God communicates 
Himself to the soul." ("Christ the life of the Soul." C. x, Part II.)

9. Heb. i. 1-3.

10. St. John xiv. 9.

11. St. Paul, Col. iii 9-10.

12. "Life" by Henelj, Ch. xii.


CHAPTER V: THE TRANSFORMING EFFECT OF MENTAL PRAYER

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." Philipp. ii. 5.

In last analysis then, Mental Prayer is the act of the soul seeking the 
society of Our Divine Lord, with a view to receiving His direction and 
coming under the control of His Sacred Humanity. His life stands revealed 
in the Gospel; the soul enters into contact with it, by a loving study of 
its mysteries. The mother of Jesus has given us the example, she herself 
passed her life doing what we are called to do. The Sacred writer assures 
us of this twice. saying, "But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in 
her heart,"[1] and again he says--"And His Mother kept all these words in her 
heart." In Hebrew "word" means "event" or "happening" usually of a striking 
or mysterious nature. It must not be forgotten that the life and actions of 
Jesus were mysteries for Mary as they are for us. The meaning of the text, 
then, is that she reflected on and turned over in her mind the actions and 
words of her own Child, studying the events of which He was the center, 
with a view to probing further into their inexhaustible depths of meaning, 
in order to be penetrated with the sentiments, emotions and dispositions of 
Jesus in all these. Mary meditated on the life of Jesus as it unfolded 
itself before her, exactly as we are asked to do, and for the same purpose-
-to be steeped in and assimilated to the spirit of that life.

For meditation on the Mysteries of Jesus is not merely an idle speculation 
followed by a barren admiration of the truth revealed in the mystery. It 
must be undertaken with an object in view, namely to become good, avoid 
vice and grow in virtue as a means to union with God. We practice prayer in 
order to be assimilated to Our Head and Lord Jesus, to reproduce His life 
in ours.

When the soul, touched by grace, determines to abandon the routine practice 
of religion and to cultivate a real interior life, a beginning is 
ordinarily made by passing from the mechanical recitation of vocal prayers 
to the practice of Meditation. The first effect of Meditation is to awaken 
the soul to the realization that it has a "mentality," an outlook on life, 
an evaluation of things totally different from that of the Person whose 
life it has begun to contemplate. This unlikeness in view, in tastes, in 
tendencies between the soul and Jesus causes the influence of the Savior 
to be felt but slightly in the beginning.

We are powerfully moved and affected only by those towards whom we are 
attracted sympathetically. If we are out of sympathy with a person, it is 
unlikely that we should be carried away or elevated or inspired to a higher 
ideal by that person no matter how gifted or virtuous he may be. And it 
must be confessed that there are comparatively few that have not been at 
some time of their life out of sympathy with the principles of Jesus and on 
a very imperfect under- standing with Him. Before their conversion men are 
worldly-minded; and this worldly-mindedness manifests itself in that uneasy 
feeling they experience when they hear of the maxims of holy men and 
ascetical writers. The words of the Saints, their appreciation of things, 
their  outlook on life--all  is, for worldly men, very chilling and 
uninspiring. The appeal of humanism is felt to be much warmer. There are 
few of us in whom these words of Father Faber have not at some time of 
other found their verification--"There are many who when they hear or read 
of the spiritual life, or come across the ordinary maxims of Christian 
perfection, do not understand what is put before them. It is as if some one 
spoke to them in a foreign language; either the words are without meaning 
or the ideas are far-fetched and unreal. They stand off from persons who 
profess to teach such doctrines or live by them, as if they had some 
contagious disease, which they  might catch themselves."[2]

When a soul fresh form this condition opens intercourse with Jesus, it is 
obvious that it would be useless for the Lord to speak too much to it. The 
uniquely in its sanctification. He is not concerned about its earthly 
prospects except in so far as they have a bearing on spiritual issues. His 
inner communications to the soul, then, will always have reference to the 
process of sanctification, and the poor soul, on its side has as yet but 
little comprehension of what sanctification means and of what its pursuit 
involves. The soul is therefore not capable of understanding the Lord's 
intentions unless very imperfectly. But anxious to advance and multiplying 
its visits to, and its moments of contact with the Divine Master, it begins 
to enter more and more into the views of its heavenly Director and falls 
more and more under His influence. At first the soul is in continual 
activity, the acts that make up the exercise of prayer are practically all 
its own. It speaks to Our Lord with a dim perception of its wants and a 
certain realization of its shortcomings. Acts of petition and contrition 
form the burden of its communications. The growth of the soul in Divine 
Grace, that is, in Divine Life, is imperceptible. Yet these pious acts 
produced by a good will have promoted its development and have imparted a 
certain amount of spiritual vigor. What is taking place spiritually may be 
illustrated by the process of bodily nourishment. The sensible, evident 
part of this process is the introduction of the food into the mouth, its 
mastication and deglutition. All these operations are capable of 
observation and control. But it is only when these observed operations are 
completed that assimilation begins, vitality is imparted and growth 
promoted. The process which is really life-giving is not an object of 
consciousness, nor does it fall under observation. In a similar way is it 
in the beginning of prayer. One is conscious of one's activities of 
imagination, intellect and will. But there is no perception of the effects 
that, by the action of grace, follow for the soul on these activities of 
the faculties. So after the soul has elicited and multiplied its acts, the 
Lord illumines the intelligence to truth and excites the will to good--in 
the beginning in an imperceptible way and afterwards perhaps more plainly.

The touches of Divine Grace are very delicate and normally speaking escape 
our consciousness. The soul is at the stage when its perceptions of 
material and natural things is keen, and its perception of spiritual things 
extremely dull. Still the process of growth in the soul-state, which 
conditions the supernatural life, goes on. Those acts, that have been 
spoken of, develop the soul inasmuch as they posit the conditions of 
development. The development in divine life is of course entirely due to 
God, the sole source of the supernatural. According as the activity of God 
on the soul is being exercised in an increasing measure, the soul's own 
activities diminish. Those of the Lord increase in proportion. The soul 
simply enters into the Presence of its Director and Guide, who begins to 
operate powerfully by instructions, illuminations and encouragements. When 
this arrives at a point where the greater part or almost all the 
conversation is carried on by the Lord, the soul leaves the ordinary course 
and enters into the state of mental prayer which is called passive.

Hence we see that mental prayer is active or ordinary and passive or 
mystical. In the former kind the action of the soul predominates; in the 
latter, the action of God. When almost the whole activity is God's, the 
soul has entered into the extraordinary states and has to undergo those 
fearful purgations which wipe away the last traces of the effects of the 
original revolt. These purifications remove the final elements of that 
resistance to the Divine, which is found in our nature since the Fall, and 
thus God is free (so to speak) to evolve His own life in the soul, and the 
soul becomes almost powerless to resist the Divine influence.

We make mental prayer therefore, to be converted from evil to good, from 
good to better, and from better to perfection; its object as has often been 
stated, is to create in us those conditions of human mind and heart, which 
are the conditions of the inflow of the Divine into us through the 
Sacraments; "For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."[3] 
The end (to the attainment of which, for adults, mental prayer is an almost 
indispensable means) is the end of our supernatural being, namely, union 
with God. Prayer aims at inaugurating that union on earth in the conditions 
and limitations of mortality. Prayer is not, then, the mere asking of 
things, but a willing associating with Jesus, in order to pass through Him 
as man to God--"I am the Way . . . no man cometh to the Father but by me."[4] 
The adoption of His principles of life and the application of them to our 
own life, is the sole way by which we can arrive at that life of which He 
as man has the plenitude--the Life Divine. A mere intellectual knowledge of 
the Gospel story doe, not bring us to this; it is only humble meditation on 
it, inspired by love, that will bring us to the determination to conform 
ourselves to the Lord Jesus.

Many give up prayer in disgust because they do not understand its meaning, 
its nature and its end. They believe prayer consists in asking for graces, 
spiritual and temporal, the acquisition of virtues or the extirpation of 
vices, and they pray in the belief that God will bestow virtues just as we 
make presents of books, or take away our vicious habits as we remove 
dangerous instruments from the hands of children Virtue is a growth and 
follows the laws and conditions of growing things; the same is true of vice 
; in the ordinary ways of Providence the sole mode of its removal is by the 
growth of the contrary virtue. God does not take away our vices as the 
surgeon severs a gangrenous limb from the body. We do not get virtues or 
lose vices merely for the asking. The desire prompting and inspiring our 
prayer should be the desire of growing in all respects like to Jesus. It is 
in that growth that vices vanish and virtues make their appearance. We pray 
to God through Jesus not so much to get something as to become some- thing, 
namely to become " conformable to the image of His Son."[5] The ultimate 
object of prayer is to glorify God and we glorify God by being as we should 
be.

The real end of prayer therefore is to be good, to effect in ourselves the 
dispositions to sanctification, that is, to purify our souls and replace 
our natural views by the views of Jesus Christ and to substitute for our 
natural life, His mode of life. This is done by frequenting the society of 
Our Lord, by dealing in converse with Him, whatever be the form this 
converse may take. It may be a seeking for advice and instruction, a 
communing on common interests, an expression of feeling or. sympathy with 
His sufferings, an exposition of one's own wants and interests, a tribute 
of praise, admiration or love. The familiar conversation with Jesus may 
vary very much as to its themes; the effect aimed at must be always a 
growing conformity to Him. In a word prayer may be considered a going to 
Jesus for spiritual direction--a direction on the way that is to lead to 
God. We pray not to dispose God to give, but to prepare ourselves to 
receive-- to receive that plenitude of Divine life which is in Christ Jesus 
Our Lord.

Note. The brief outline given in this chapter will be developed in the next 
three.

1. Luke ii. 19 and 51.

2. The Creator and the Creature. Bk. I, Chap. i.

3. Phil. ii. 5.

4. St. John xiv. G.

5. Rom. viii, 29.


CHAPTER VI : THE FIRST STAGE IN THE TRANSFORMATION 

"It is written--not on bread alone doth man live, but on every word that 
procedeth from the mouth of God." Luke iv. 4. 

When the soul moved by grace resolves to place itself entirely under the 
direction of Jesus in view of its spiritual advancement, it is, ordinarily 
speaking, full of imperfections. Moreover, it does not realize how 
imperfect it is. Having as yet no comprehension of perfection it is without 
understanding of imperfection. It is not alive to all the evil that is 
active in itself. It comes to Jesus with a natural outlook, independent, 
passionate, sensual, proud, uncharitable, a lover of ease and se]f-
satisfaction. Novices in the spiritual life are all this, without their 
being aware of the fact of anything being wrong with them in that respect. 
They know of sin only as a positive violation of God's Law, and are unaware 
that there is an habitual cast of thought, that is more dangerous than an 
actual evil act. They come imbued with the spirit of the world and 
fashioned to the habits, formed by the years of living according to that 
spirit. Life has been for them a tissue of those ideas, judgments, 
sentiments, principles, hopes, fears, desires, regrets and dreams which 
envelop the souls of men, corrupt their vision and little by little hide 
from them heaven and the eternity for which they are destined. To those 
entering on the spiritual life, things spiritual have appealed but vaguely, 
whilst all that can be seen, weighed, touched and handled, alone have had 
value in their eyes. The spirit of the world is the spirit which considers 
life, health, glory, beauty, riches, family, country, goodness itself, 
without referring them to God their author and end; it looks upon these as 
objects to possess without any reference to God. Under the influence of 
this spirit they are attracted to sensible things, to honors, pleasures 
and satisfactions of all sorts and they are averse from heavenly 
contemplation.

When God gives the call to the interior life, a ray of Divine Actual Grace 
penetrates through this darkness that surrounds the soul, revealing to it, 
in a flash of light, the beauty of the ideal of a spiritual or divine life, 
and at the same time the will, by an additional grace, is captivated by the 
beauty of this ideal and moved to embrace it. The soul without as yet 
understanding anything of the ways of God or of the life of union with Him 
dimly perceives that it is beautiful and happiness-giving. Then the soul 
resolves to undertake that search for God which, if persevered in, will end 
in the finding of Him and of itself. 

The beginning of the interior life is therefore much occupied with 
intellectual activity. It is devoted to the consideration of what we are, 
of what God is. It is a study of the Christian life, its principles and its 
maxims. The will's activity consists in the endeavor to establish in 
ourselves the conviction that there should be a necessary connection 
between the doctrine of the Gospel and our way of living. What is 
discovered in this study shows a startling contrast between the principles 
on which most of one's conduct has been based and the principles laid down 
in the Gospel by Our Divine Lord. There follows on this discovery, feelings 
of uneasiness, shame, terror and a keen desire to escape from the un-
Christian state of soul in which one finds oneself. The newly awakened soul 
is startled to find that in reality it had been living its life as if the 
Gospel and its principles were meant to apply only in a partial measure to 
itself, and were reserved in their literal application only to some rare 
beings with a special vocation to be saints. 

It is truly disconcerting to find that there is but one Gospel for all and 
that one has to conform oneself to that, or face the most severe 
consequences here and hereafter. Without deliberately formulating it as a 
theory, the average person practically works out a comfortable kind of 
Gospel for himself, bearing but a faint resemblance to that of Jesus 
Christ. In other words people who are not definitely converted to God, 
Christians who allow themselves to be carried away by the worldly and false 
life around them, come to justify views, principles and a course of action 
which find no justification in the teaching of Jesus Christ. "God is hidden 
in us, and from us," writes St. John of the Cross. "To find Him we must go 
to hide ourselves where He is hidden. In other words to find God, we must 
forget ourselves completely, separate ourselves from all creatures and 
retire within our own interior. Then having renounced all, we can pray to 
the Father in secret."[1] The beginnings of the Presence of God are very 
painful and demand strong efforts, for sin (and the habits it engenders) 
has sown such discord in the original relations between the soul and its 
Creator, that we are in truth strangers to God--strangers to Him who is our 
First Principle and our Last End--as if an abyss separated us from Him in 
whom we live, move and have our being. 

"We have been so accustomed," says St. Teresa, "to follow every whim and 
fancy, to gratify ourselves in all that we consider not positively sinful 
(our efforts to live a Christian life have consisted rather in the effort 
to avoid what was wrong, than to do what was right)[2] that the soul no 
longer understands itself as a soul. To accustom it to God it is necessary 
to proceed slowly, with caution and patience."[3]

A vivid realization of the falsity of its attitude towards life is the 
first strong grace given to the soul when it resolves to turn to God. The 
work that is demanded from it, if it is to profit by that grace, is that it 
should form strong, deep and practical convictions on this one point--
namely that the type of life portrayed by Our Lord is the only one that can 
be adopted by oneself if one is to be Christian.[4] Owing to ingrained 
habits, the soul finds an active rebellion in itself against the 
acceptation of this life as its own. Mental Prayer at this point is made up 
chiefly of considerations; the activity is mostly of the understanding; the 
role of the will is limited. The acts of the latter are mostly of 
repentance, an earnest pleading for forgiveness for the past which looms 
now in horror against the vivid light which God has projected on the 
background of the previous existence. The soul with a deep sense of its own 
sinfulness pours itself out in humble petitions for help to improve. The 
Lord listens patiently, contemplates with pity, says very little on His 
side (for the soul cannot as yet understand the Divine instructions) but 
accords an increased taste for spiritual things, a detestation of worldly 
things, and the grace of strong repentance. The soul begins little by 
little to see itself as God sees it, because it has learned to make its 
considerations as if analyzing itself in the presence of the Divine Master. 
Even when engaged in an examination of its own states and dispositions it 
must not turn its gaze away from the Lord or lose the sense of His 
presence. It must examine itself, as it were, through His eyes and in His 
light. 

The soul leaves the presence of Jesus with the resolution to practice the 
virtues which it has seen in Him and to uproot the vices it has now 
discovered in itself. It succeeds as long as the movement of fervor lasts 
and is cheated by this success into the belief that it is already on the 
high road to sanctity. The soul having an imperfect notion of the action of 
prayer, falls into the mistake of thinking that it can have virtues for the 
mere asking of them and rid itself of its defects by praying for such an 
emancipation. It does not realize that to acquire the former and rid itself 
of the latter, there is required a long process and much labor and toil. 
To extirpate a vice requires a constant unremitting reaction against its 
activity, by continual exercise of the acts of the opposite virtue. The 
soul does not readily understand this, and very easily, in a sense of false 
security due to the excesses of fervor it has experienced, it allows 
itself to drift into ways and modes of action incompatible with the 
interior life. It yields to dissipation, distraction and immortification 
without adverting to the fact that these faults rapidly undermine the frail 
spiritual edifice it has constructed. The old habits have not, as it 
thinks, been burned away and destroyed in the fervor of sensible devotion. 
Their activities have been dormant for a time but they have remained 
strongly rooted in the soul. The consequence is that when the fervor has 
passed and the normal play of circumstances begins, and occasions arise, 
things forthwith make the same appeal to the appetites as before. 

Very few realize that every mortal sin leaves on the soul a strong tendency 
to evil--sets up in it a perverse disposition which does not disappear with 
the tears of repentance and the sentence of pardon. The habits created by 
years of the self-indulgence of a worldly life do not disappear in the 
fervor of a well-made retreat. Unless one is on the watch and exercises 
oneself in mortification, these habits begin to manifest themselves when 
the circumstances are favorable to their excitation. The things that 
pleased of old begin to exercise the same attraction again; and in 
corresponding measure the taste for spiritual things declines. The 
inexperienced soul is astonished and dismayed at finding as active in 
itself as ever the evil tendencies which it believed had disappeared for 
ever. In the renewed contact with the evil in itself, all the period of 
fervor begins to appear to have been a time of unreality. Having begun the 
super- natural enterprise under a false notion, it becomes discouraged and 
loses confidence in itself. It has erred in confusing sensible devotion 
with spirituality. 

God gives sensible fervor in order to enable us to break more readily with 
our vicious habits. Being immortified we are drawn towards that which is 
most attractive for us. God, stooping to this weakness and profiting by it 
in the interests of our salvation, gives us a sensible attraction to 
spiritual things and shows us natural things in a light which renders them 
distasteful. By this illumination we are enabled to form a conviction of 
the superiority of the good of the soul over any merely natural good. This 
conviction is made to enable us to persevere afterwards when all becomes 
dark. 

Spirituality itself has no attraction for nature; on the contrary nature is 
repelled by it. Our progress in the spiritual life is in direct proportion 
to the degree in which natures has been brought into subjection. Now, if 
the sensible attraction for spiritual things were to continue to exist, our 
nature, that is, the appetite for self-gratification in us, would be 
nourished by it and would not die. God, to wean the soul from seeking its 
gratification in creatures, offers it in the beginning a gratification of a 
superior kind derived from spiritual things. But the soul cannot make 
progress unless it aims at spirituality independently of any gratification 
it finds in it. Hence to cure it of its "spiritual sensuality," God 
withdraws sensible delight in the interior life and leaves the soul to go 
forward in faith. The soul then finds itself faced with the evil habits and 
tendencies fostered by a life lived for the gratification of self. To 
conquer these habits and develop the supernatural virtues of religion, 
humility, charity and mortification, God leaves the beginner in the 
spiritual life with merely the firm conviction, based upon faith, of the 
necessity of acquiring the virtues just mentioned, of advancing in the 
grace of God and saving his soul.

In this state it is evident that things will act upon the individual in the 
way in which they were wont to act. The soul is affected by things 
precisely in the same way as it was affected by them previous to its 
conversion. It is readily drawn towards what is opposed to the life of the 
spirit, and it has no attraction towards the acts and habits that pertain 
to the life of virtue. It has nothing to move it to the practice of 
christian virtue except the rational conviction, enlightened by faith, of 
the utility and the necessity of virtue if it is to attain to union with 
God.

This is a moment of serious danger in the spiritual life. It is a point 
where great numbers turn aside and quit the path that leads to intimacy 
with God. Mortification, the avoidance of occasions that tempt to 
dissipation or sensuality and the strong resolve to cling to God even 
though His service involve only hardship and distastefulness--these are the 
safeguards against failure. But if one is weak, if one allows oneself to 
drift into the ways frequented before, if one seeks the same satisfactions 
in pleasant companionships and indulges in the practices of the previous 
immortified life, if one permits sensuality, waste of time, self-indulgence 
and self-seeking to invade one's life, the inevitable happens. The 
supernatural becomes a vague unreal memory, a dream from which one has 
awakened to reality. The conviction of its importance is obliterated and 
all the good effects produced during the period of fervor disappear. 
Having been accustomed to doing always that which is agreeable and to avoid 
what is disagreeable, the soul gives up spirituality as soon as it ceases 
to exercise an attraction on it. The soul longed to find in spirituality a 
bread pleasing to the sensible palate and so falls victim to the 
temptations of sensuality. The soul at this juncture undergoes a struggle 
that bears a resemblance to the first temptation of Our Savior in the 
desert. The temptation is to renounce the pursuit of union with God when 
there is no longer any " felt " or experienced satisfaction in that 
pursuit. It is the temptation to ask that the stones that go to make up the 
rugged path that leads to God, the hard stones of mortification and self-
denial, change their nature and be turned into something agreeable to the 
palate of the natural man.

This temptation is very strong and many souls fall victims to it. It is all 
the more subtle because it seems so reasonable. To the soul, finding in 
itself a positive distaste for what appears to be the cold forbidding 
deserts of the spiritual life and finding in itself on the other hand a 
very strong inclination for and a drawing towards the pleasures of the 
natural life, it seems absurd to continue the pursuit of an ideal for which 
its experiences apparently manifest its unfitness. The former efforts after 
a practice of Christianity above the ordinary now appear the effect of a 
vain and mistaken ambition. The soul does not "feel" itself to be 
spiritual, why should it continue to act in the way spiritual persons act? 
Why not satisfy the natural longings (of course always within the limits of 
the Ten Commandments) --why not "command the stones to be made bread" and 
live like everybody else? Carried away by these reasonings the soul gives 
up the practice of the interior life altogether or becomes slack and 
perfunctory in the exercise of that life. Its ambition gradually dwindles 
down to what it thinks to be the observance of the decalogue; the 
observance of the ordinary law of God as interpreted by itself is 
sufficient spirituality, it thinks, for one of its humble attainments and 
unspiritual tastes; it is effort enough to keep within the limits of the 
main points of Christian law. It persuades itself that salvation may be 
secured by these limited efforts without facing the hardships of an austere 
interior life. For a soul that has received the call to close intimacy with 
God such a resolve may prove fatal. 

As the temptation bears a resemblance to that of Jesus in the desert, the 
resistance to it must be such as His was. "Not on bread alone doth man live 
but on every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God."[6] Bread is 
undoubtedly the staff of life. But the life that it maintains is not the 
only one that is given to man to live. Life can have a higher form, and 
nourishment of another kind. If we seek for a " life that is truly life "--
and that is what we are really seeking--we must give up looking for it in 
the eating of bread, that is, in the pursuit of those things that are 
agreeable to the appetite of the natural man. This seeking after and the 
giving oneself every possible gratification, short of those that involve a 
grave breach of God's law, does give a certain kind of life, but this life 
is as nothing compared with that which is enjoyed by feeding our souls on 
the word of God. Life is to be sought only where it is to be found 
lastingly; it is so found in intimacy with God, in converse with Him, in 
nourishing our souls on His communications. Life is to be found for us in 
the words that proceed from the mouth of God and are addressed to the 
spirit within. Convinced of the fundamental truth that we are created to 
praise, revere and serve God, convinced that we belong to Him absolutely 
whether we will it or no, we must be resolved to persevere in fulfilling 
His will in our regard,--which will is our sanctification[7]--even though 
everything that the fulfillment of that will involves, prove distasteful to 
us. We must be ready to pursue the work of our own sanctification, even 
though we are sorely tried by hunger after the satisfactions of a life 
lived for the indulgence of every gratification not positively sinful. We 
must be strong to rise superior to our feelings and to follow not that 
which is more pleasant, but that which conducts us most surely and securely 
to God's friendship. 

The discipline of the religious life, resolutely submitted to, is a great 
help in this crisis. The rule calls to the exercise of prayer several times 
in the day; it enjoins an attention and a reverential posture at these 
exercises; in this way it saves the soul from a complete surrender to 
itself. If the sorely tempted soul were free to regulate the activities of 
its day, it would, probably, abandon the practice of mental prayer 
altogether as being tedious and unfruitful. 

There is a definite course of conduct to be followed in this trial if the 
danger it carries with it is to be escaped. The person that has begun to 
walk in the way of the interior life, must continue to acquit him- self of 
his exercises of prayer with fidelity and with all the perfection, at least 
material and exterior, that he brought to their acquittal when carried away 
by a strong movement of devotion and fervor. He must do them even though 
he finds no apparent good in his prayer, even though he has no satisfaction 
in it, even though he has a positive distaste for it. In a word though he 
finds himself in no way 'prayerful,' he must 'act as if' he were. Those who 
are at this point in the interior life must not allow themselves to be 
betrayed into making their outward bearing reflect what they think to be 
their inner attitude of soul. Though they feel as if all their spirituality 
had oozed away from their soul, they must continue to bear themselves in 
their relations with persons or things, and especially their spiritual 
exercises, as they did when fervent. The salutary effect of this will be 
felt speedily, for there is a natural reaction of the exterior on the 
interior. There is a great virtue in this principle of "acting as if." Men 
tend to develop feelings corresponding to their actions. The successful 
effort to wear a smiling countenance induces an inner disposition of 
pleasantness and amiability. Thoughts in their turn are influenced by 
feelings and finally actions bear the impress of thoughts. It is by the 
working of this psychological law that a spiritual bearing and deportment, 
as, for instance, a deliberately reverential attitude in the presence of 
God, a christian dignity and elevation in speech, and a courteous attitude 
towards others, are instrumental in producing a true, inward devotion. For 
all this, of course, there are needed, courage, energy and self-discipline. 

The earnest and upright soul must not allow itself to be betrayed into the 
belief that in acting in the manner outlined it will be behaving in ~n 
unreal and hypocritical manner. It is a common temptation to judge that it 
is dishonest not to bear oneself outwardly as one is (or believes one is) 
inwardly. This judgment contains a profound error. There are in us two 
selves, the true and the false. We are more conscious of the latter than 
the former, and that is the reason why the false appears to us to be the 
real self. By Baptism we have been made children of God and have ceased to 
be children of wrath. The true self in us, in consequence, is the child of 
grace, the brother of Jesus Christ. The alien from God has been thrust out 
by Baptism, ostracized, and condemned to death. "You are not," says St. 
Paul, writing to the Romans, "in the flesh, but in the spirit . . . and if 
Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit 
liveth because of justification . . . therefore, brethren, we are debtors 
not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh."[8] We are really false in 
our bearing and untrue to ourselves when we act and speak according to the 
unspiritual promptings in us. That character is not acting hypocritically 
but acting in the very reverse manner, who carries himself outwardly in all 
the relations of life, as a being that is spiritual, of heavenly tastes, 
though he " feels" anything but that interiorly. Furthermore, by constantly 
acting " spiritually " he becomes " spiritual".[9] 

When Satan, urging this argument of hypocrisy, bids us be such as we find 
ourselves, he must be met by a counter argument. He said to the Lord, " Why 
depend on God for your food, why not use the power that is really yours and 
make these stones be bread ? " The Savior answered that though there was 
in Him a life that was sustained by bread, there was another and a higher 
life that was sustained by loving dependence on and union with God. So 
likewise, when Satan whispers to us that we are really but sinful 
creatures, with earthly tastes and likings, and that we should, if sincere 
and honest, act as such, our reply should have a parallelism with that of 
the Savior's. " True," we should say to him, " we are sinful creatures, 
but we are not only that. We have been redeemed. By right and title we are 
children of God." That is what we really and truly are; the other we have 
been. To act then as it becomes us to act, truly to reflect in our conduct 
what we are, we must in all things comport ourselves as having heavenly 
tastes and ideals. It is to be admitted that years of seeking after 
gratification have developed in us tastes the very opposite of those that 
befit a child of God. At present, owing to the habits formed by the years 
of self-indulgence, I find interiorly a contradiction between my true and 
my false self, and the latter seems to be predominant. Yet by the 
cultivation of a truly spiritual bearing in all things possible to me by 
ascetical effort aided by grace, I know that this contradiction will 
ultimately disappear. The exterior will finally affect the interior; the 
old habits will wither away and I shall end by finding satisfaction in God 
alone. My life will be the living by every word that proceeds from the 
mouth of God. When the soul has in this manner rejected the wiles of Satan, 
she has taken a decisive step onward in the. interior life. 

It is because many souls are persuaded that they should reflect in their 
exterior what they conceive to be their true, but what is in reality their 
false self, that there is the too common spectacle of those who having 
begun well end by being complete failures spiritually. The arguments of 
Satan, condemning as hypocrisy, this effort to " act as if spiritual," must 
be treated as a temptation and met by counter arguments. The truth is that 
the Christian is by Baptism a child of God and should therefore have an 
interior disposition corresponding to that state. He should have affection 
only for God and for all else in God. When conversion is at its beginning, 
the evil habits that have been contracted by a past life lived for self, 
give us tastes quite opposite to the tastes that should be those of a child 
of God. Those heavenly tastes and instincts cannot become rooted in the 
soul until the contrary ones have been rooted out. That rooting out will 
involve time and labor. But in the meantime whilst awaiting the successful 
termination of the process of destroying the perverse tendencies, the 
Christian can school himself to act as if the process were complete. He 
must so bear himself as if his tastes were all spiritual, avoiding such 
speech, such acts, such judgment, such courses of conduct as mark the non-
spiritual. 

1. St. John of the Cross. 1st Strophe of "The Dark Night of the Soul."

2. The words in parenthesis are mine.

3. "Way of Perfection"---St. Theresa. Chap. xxvi.

4. In speaking of adopting the type of life led by Our Lord, the words are 
not to be taken in a materiel sense. To adopt the Lord's life does not 
involve taking up the occupation of His earthly existence, but it means 
living our life after the principles which guided his.

5. The word 'nature' here is to be taken in the ascetical, not in the exact 
philosophical sense. It means what St. Catherine of Siena calls sensuality 
It is the 'ensemble' of these tendencies both of the spirit and the senses 
in which man aims at procuring his own satisfaction, independently of the 
law both of reason and of faith.

6. St. Matt. iv. 4.

7. "This is the will of God, your sanctification." (I Thess. iv. 3)

8. Rom. viii. 9-l[2].

9. It may be noted that it is equally true according to this psychological 
law that by exteriorly acting in an "unspiritual way" one becomes 
unspiritual. This fact frequently becomes of practical importance in the 
spiritual life. The tendency to take the line of least resistance, to be 
accommodating, to respond to the dictates of human respect, often leads 
souls to assume a course of action or agree with a course of thought which 
is distinctly unspiritual and even worldly. Such "putting on" is meant to 
be "for the time being," but apart from the fact that it means a definite 
relinquishing of principles it has the sad result of developing the 
facility to be worldly and unspiritual and of producing a mentality that is 
by no means Christ-like. The truth of this is exemplified in the case of 
religious who in contact with the world (the parlor or hospital) assume 
the ways and line of thought of those who are not in religion and whose 
lives are not completely influenced by the principles of Christ Our Lord. 
If spiritual progress is to be made the soul must adopt the advice of St. 
John Berchmans: "Make open profession of aiming at the interior life."


CHAPTER VII: THE SECOND STAGE IN THE TRANSFORMATION

"It is written---thou shalt adore the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou 
serve." St. Luke iv. 8.

The soul having thus successfully surmounted the first great trial in the 
interior life returns to God with the conviction that it must serve Him, 
not for the delight it finds in the things appertaining to His service but 
solely for His sake and for the sake of union with Him as the end for which 
it has been created. It is now clearly seen that seeking God is not a 
matter of delight but of a steady struggle to overcome defects, root out 
vices and practice virtues. With this end in view, prayer takes on a new 
tone. Already in the first stage strong and deep convictions have been 
formed with regard to fundamental truths. The soul now occupies itself 
seriously with the means of realizing the consequences that flow from these 
basic truths. The principal of these consequences is that God must be won 
at all costs and that the life which does not issue in close union with Him 
is a failure. Acts of sorrow and regret are still frequent, but they have 
changed somewhat their tone and character. Formerly they proceeded 
principally from a hatred of the acts of sin because of the evil 
consequences they involved, now repentance tends to become a dislike of sin 
as being destructive of the moral beauty the soul aspires to.

The soul realizes its own fundamental weakness; it sees that the source of 
its sins lies deeper than it thought at first. It thought it had only to 
make an act of the will in order to be good. It thought that it had only to 
will to change and immediately spiritual tastes would replace the earthly 
ones. It finds that it can will and will very strongly to change and yet no 
change follows. It believed that there was nothing more in sin than the 
act, and that with the cessation of the act would disappear the root of the 
sins. It has not yet realized that the habit of self-will and self- 
indulgence is rooted out only by a long course of self- denial. The evil 
that it still finds strong in itself makes it understand that its own 
conversion to good has not destroyed in it the source of corruption. It has 
become clear that this source can be dried up only by a laborious pursuit 
and practice of the acts of the virtues contrary to the vices it finds 
rooted in itself. It knows too that its own efforts count little but that 
much can be achieved by the help of the Divine Master. It trusts to His 
goodness for that help. Its chief aim at this stage, becomes the 
acquisition of the virtues and it sets itself to a study of the means to 
acquire these virtues and to overcome the opposite vices.

The soul becomes ardently eager for its own perfection and feels a deep 
humiliation and shame at its imperfections. It asks the Lord earnestly to 
assist it to acquire these virtues and to raise it to the perfection it 
ambitions. Souls at this point often experience an acute spiritual jealousy 
of others whom they see advanced in the way of perfection; they are pained 
at the humiliating contrast presented by their own miserable state. This 
ambition and jealousy show that there is a large measure of self-love and 
self-esteem in the desire to become perfect. They importune Our Lord, more