Meditation

MEDITATION
“THOMAS” (Fr. Louis) MERTON, O.C.S.O.

TO meditate is to exercise the mind in serious reflection. This is the broadest possible sense of the word “meditation.” The term in this sense is not confined to religious reflections, but it implies serious mental activity and a certain absorption or concentration which does not permit our faculties to wander off at random or to remain slack and undirected.

From the very start it must be made clear, however, that reflection here does not refer to a purely intellectual activity, and still less does it refer to mere reasoning. Reflection involves not only the mind but also the heart, and indeed our whole being. One who really meditates does not merely think, he also loves, and by his love — or at least by his sympathetic intuition into the reality upon which he reflects — he enters into that reality and knows it so to speak from within, by a kind of identification.

St. Thomas and St. Bernard of Clairvaux describe meditation (consideratio) as “the quest for truth.” Nevertheless their “meditation” is something quite distinct from study, which is also a “quest for truth.”

Meditation and study can, of course, be closely related. In fact, study is not spiritually fruitful unless it leads to some kind of meditation. By study we seek the truth in books or in some other source outside our own minds. In meditation we strive to absorb what we have already taken in. We consider the principles we have learned and we apply them to our own lives. Instead of simply storing up facts and ideas in our memory, we strive to do some original thinking of our own.

In study we can be content with an idea or a concept that is true. We can be content to know about truth. Meditation is for those who are not satisfied with a merely objective and conceptual knowledge about life, about God — about ultimate realities. They want to enter into an intimate contact with truth itself, with God. They want to experience the deepest realities of life by living them. Meditation is the means to that end.

And so, although the definition of meditation as a quest for truth (inquisitio veritatis) brings out the fact that meditation is above all a function of the intelligence, nevertheless it implies something more. St. Thomas and St. Bernard were speaking of a kind of meditation which is fundamentally religious, or at least philosophical, and which aims at bringing our whole being into communication with an ultimate reality beyond and above ourselves. This unitive and loving knowledge begins in meditation but it reaches its full development only in contemplative prayer.

This idea is very important. Strictly speaking, even religious meditation is primarily a matter of thought. But it does not end in thought. Meditative thought is simply the beginning of a process which leads to interior prayer and is normally supposed to culminate in contemplation and in affective communion with God. We can call this whole process (in which meditation leads to contemplation) by the name mental prayer. In actual practice, the word “meditation” is quite often used as if it meant exactly the same thing as “mental prayer.” But if we look at the precise meaning of the word, we find that meditation is only a small part of the whole complex of interior activities which go to make up mental prayer. Meditation is the name given to the earlier part of the process, the part in which our heart and mind exercise themselves in a series of interior activities which prepare us for union with God.

When thought is without affective intention, when it begins and ends in the intelligence, it does not lead to prayer, to love or to communion. Therefore it does not fall into the proper pattern of mental prayer. Such thought is not really meditation. It is outside the sphere of religion and of prayer. It is therefore excluded from our consideration here. It has nothing to do with our subject. We need only remark that a person would be wasting his time if he thought reasoning alone could satisfy the need of his soul for spiritual meditation. Meditation is not merely a matter of “thinking things out,” even if that leads to a good ethical resolution. Meditation is more than mere practical thinking.

The distinctive characteristic of religious meditation is that it is a search for truth which springs from love and which seeks to possess the truth not only by knowledge but also by love. It is, therefore, an intellectual activity which is inseparable from an intense consecration of spirit and application of the will. The presence of love in our meditation intensifies and clarifies our thought by giving it a deeply affective quality. Our meditation becomes charged with a loving appreciation of the value hidden in the supreme truth which the intelligence is seeking. This affective drive of the will, seeking the truth as the soul’s highest good, raises the soul above the level of speculation and makes our quest for truth a prayer full of reverential love and adoration striving to pierce the dark cloud which stands between us and the throne of God. We beat against this cloud with supplication, we lament our poverty, our helplessness, we adore the mercy of God and His supreme perfections, we dedicate ourselves entirely to His worship.

Mental prayer is therefore something like a skyrocket. Kindled by a spark of divine love, the soul streaks heavenward in an act of intelligence as clear and direct as the rocket’s trail of fire. Grace has released all the deepest energies of our spirit and assists us to climb to new and unsuspected heights. Nevertheless, our own faculties soon reach their limit. The intelligence can climb no higher into the sky. There is a point where the mind bows down its fiery trajectory as if to acknowledge its limitations and proclaim the infinite supremacy of the unattainable God.

But it is here that our “meditation” reaches its climax. Love again takes the initiative and the rocket “explodes” in a burst of sacrificial praise. Thus love flings out a hundred burning stars, acts of all kinds, expressing everything that is best in man’s spirit, and the soul spends itself in drifting fires that glorify the Name of God while they fall earthward and die away in the night wind!

That is why St. Albert the Great, the master who gave St. Thomas Aquinas his theological formation at Paris and Cologne, contrasts the contemplation of the philosopher and the contemplation of the saints:

The contemplation of philosophers seeks nothing but the perfection of the one contemplating and it goes no further than the intellect. But the contemplation of the saints is fired by the love of the one contemplated: that is, God. Therefore it does not terminate in an act of the intelligence but passes over into the will by love.

St. Thomas Aquinas, his disciple, remarks tersely that for this very reason the contemplative’s knowledge of God is arrived at, on this earth, by the light of burning love : per ardorem caritatis datur cognitio veritatis. (Commentary on St. John’s Gospel, Chapter 5.)

The contemplation of “philosophers,” which is merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature as it is reflected in creatures, would be therefore like a skyrocket that soared into the sky but never went off. The beauty of the rocket is in its “death,” and the beauty of mental prayer and of mystical contemplation is in the soul’s abandonment and total surrender of itself in an outburst of praise in which it spends itself entirely to bear witness to the transcendent goodness of the infinite God. The rest is silence.

Let us never forget that the fruitful silence in which words lose their power and concepts escape our grasp is perhaps the perfection of meditation. We need not fear and become restless when we are no longer able to “make acts.” Rather we should rejoice and rest in the luminous darkness of faith. This “resting” is a higher way of prayer.

We read in Genesis that Isaac went out into the field in the evening to meditate (Gen. 2₄:6₃). What was he meditating about? The patriarchs were men very close to God, men to whom He spoke familiarly. He was always close at hand in the lives of Noe, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. When the Jews invoked the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they invoked Him whom their fathers knew, Him who had promised salvation to them through their fathers. Although man was expelled from paradise, a few chosen persons still enjoyed something of the intimacy with God which had belonged to the old days when Adam and Eve heard His voice as He walked in the Garden of Eden in the early evening.

One reason why the Law was given to Moses on Sinai was that the Chosen People were afraid to speak directly with God or have Him speak to them.

And all the people saw the voices and-the flames, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mount smoking: and being terrified and struck with fear, they stood afar off, saying to Moses: Speak thou to us, and we will hear; let not the Lord speak to us, lest we die ! (Exodus 20:18-19).

Meditation on the Law of the Lord was now a valid substitute for the intimate familiarity with God which had been the joy and light of the patriarchs. How could this be so if meditation on the Law did not lead to a union of minds and wills with God, if meditation did not bear fruit in a holy and supernatural conversation with God, sanctified by filial fear, and consecrated by reverence, obedience and self-sacrificing love ? The reward of this meditation was the light of supernatural prudence, a wisdom which penetrated the meaning of the Law. This meditation on the Law meant that men not only externally fulfilled its prescriptions but understood their import, saw them in relation to God’s purposes for man. This understanding brought man face to face with the power and mercy of God, reflected in His promises to the holy nation and in His designs for them. The fruit of understanding was indefectible moral strength, supernatural courage.

Take courage therefore, and be very valiant: that thou mayst observe and do all the law, which Moses my servant hath commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayst understand all things which thou dust. Let not the book of his law depart from thy mouth: but thou shalt meditate on it day and night, that thou mayst observe and do all things that are written in it : then shalt thou direct thy way, and understand it (Josue 1:7, 8).

recitation of the Law : its words make some sense when they are in our mouths, but they only make complete sense if they are at the same time fulfilled in our lives. Meditation on the Law means therefore not only thinking about the Law, studying the Law, but living it with a full, or relatively full, understanding of God’s purpose in manifesting to us His will.

But what is this purpose? We shall see that God’s real intentions for man are contained not only in the Law of His justice but also and especially in the promise of His mercy. All God’s love for us was already implicitly contained in His promises to Abraham. The “just man lives by faith” in those promises.

The psalms everywhere sing of this “meditation” on the Law of God. But above and beyond the Law, the psalmists are carried out of themselves by their experience of God’s mercy, by their realization of His fidelity to His promises: Misericordias Domini in aeternum can tabo ! The psalms meditate not only on the goodness and beauty of the Law of God, and on the happiness of a life set in order by that Law, but above all on a supreme and ecstatic happiness which is the pure gift of God’s mercy to the poor, to the Anawin — to those who, because they have no human hope, greatness or support, are therefore shielded and loved with a special power and compassion on the part of God. Meditation on the psalms, inspired by love, is the key to the great mystery of the divine compassion.

Hence the psalmist often sees himself raised above the level at which one finds God only through th medium of an outward expression of His will. Often the psalms bring us close to God Himself, the merciful God, the God who has promised justice to the oppressed, mercy and salvation to His people. The meditation of which the psalms are constantly singing often rises to the level of a penetrating experience of God’s everlasting mercies. Then the psalmist breaks out into praise; for this experience of God’s mercy is above all an experience that He is the supreme and transcendent Reality, and that He, the Lord who is above all gods, loves those to whom He has manifested His love and their salvation.

I will show forth thy truth from generation to generation. For thou hast said: mercy shall be built up forever in the heavens:

It is clear, then, that the way of meditation is the way to perfect happiness, because it leads to the knowledge of the living God, to an experience of who He really is !

Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence.

But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night.

And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the runping waters, which shall bring forth its fruit in due season.

Not so the wicked, not so: but like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth.

Therefore the wicked shall not rise again in judgment: nor sinners in the council of the just.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the just: and the way of the wicked shall perish (Ps. 1).

Monks meditate on the psalms when they sing them. But St. Benedict in his Rule provides for a time when this meditation on the psalms is carried on outside of choir. The meditation can have various degrees. For beginners it means simply learning them by heart. For those further advanced it means the intelligent penetration of their meaning.

However this penetration of the meaning of the psalms was not just a matter of studying them with the aid of a commentary. It was a question of “savoring” and “absorbing” the meaning of the psalms in the depths of one’s own heart, repeating the words slowly, thoughtfully, prayerfully in the deepest center of one’s being, so that the psalms gradually come to be as intimate and personal as one’s own reflections and feelings. Thus the psalms “form” the mind and the heart of the monk according to the mind and heart of Christ. Even the perfect monk does not abandon his meditatio psalmorum as if it were a mere exercise for beginners.

Contemplatives keep these holy words, as did Mary, pondering them in their hearts so that they re-live the deep experiences of the psalmist, and in so doing are touched by the finger of God, raised to contemplation, and penetrate deeply into the mystery of Christ, which overshadows the whole Old Testament like the luminous cloud on Thabor. Christ is everywhere in the psalms, the Law and the Prophets. To find Him in them is to experience their perfect fulfillment because we find Him who is the life and meaning of the psalms, living within ourselves.

Jesus gave His disciples the sacrifice and sacrament of the Eucharist. This tremendous gift, containing in itself all the wisdom of God in mystery, sums up in itself all the mighty works of God, and is the greatest of them all. In this sacrament we are intimately united to Him, and bless Him who has “visited His people.” The mystery of God’s merciful love is revealed in the pierced Heart of Christ, the magnum pietatis sacramentum.

Meditation on this mystery, is, in some sense, essential to the Eucharistic sacrifice since Jesus said, “Do this in memory of me.” The Mass is a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice, not in the sense of an exterior commemoration, but as a living and supremely efficacious re-presentation of that sacrifice, pouring out into our hearts the redemptive power of the Cross and the grace of the resurrection, which enables us to live in God. Our participation in the Eucharistic sacrifice and our entrance with burning hearts into the mystery of Christ assumesin our lives the place which belonged to “meditation of the Law” in the lives of the Old Testament saints. Nevertheless, as the New Testament does not do away with the Old, neither do we cease to meditate on the Law of the Lord. But our meditation is now nourished by the memoria Christi—the consciousness, the awareness, the experience of Jesus hidden in the Old Testament which He has now fulfilled.

This is what meditation meant to St. Paul: the finding of ourselves in Christ, the penetration of the Scriptures by divinely enlightened love, the discovery of our divine adoption and the praise of His glory.

Let us meditate on the Scriptures, which, as St. Paul says, were all written to fill us with the knowledge of God’s promises and the hope of their fulfillment. “For what things soever were written, were written for our learning: that through patience and the comfort of the scriptures, we might have hope” (Romans 15:4) Believing in what we meditate, we are sealed, transformed, consecrated: “Signed with the Holy Spirit of promise.” And to what purpose?

That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation, in the knowledge of him: the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what the hope is of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power towards us, who believe according to the operation of the might of his power ...” (Ephesians 1:17-19).

All comparisons are defective in some respect. Our image of the sky-rocket might perhaps mislead imaginative minds. Meditation does not have to be colorful or spectacular. The effectiveness of our mental prayer is not to be judged by the interior fireworks that go off inside us when we pray. On the contrary, although sometimes the fruit of a good meditation may be an ardent sensible love springing from vivid insights into the truth, these so-called “consolations of prayer” are not to be trusted without reserve or sought for their own sake alone. We should be deeply grateful when our prayer really brings us an increase of clear understanding and felt generosity and we should by no means despise the stimulation of sensible devotion when it helps us to do whatever we have to do, with greater humility, fidelity and courage.

Nevertheless, since the fruit of mental prayer is harvested in the depths of the soul, in the will and in the intelligence, and not on the level of emotion and instinctive reactions, it is quite possible that a meditation that is apparently “cold,” because it is without feelings,may be most profitable. It can give us great strength and spiritualize our interior life, lifting it above the level of the senses and teaching us to guide ourselves by reason and the principles of faith.

Sometimes a potentially good meditation can even be spoiled by emotion. The spiritual effect of grace may be frustrated, the will may remain inert while the germinating idea is sterilized by sentimentality.

This is one of the points at which ignorance makes progress in mental prayer difficult or even impossible. Those who think that their meditation must always culminate in a burst of emotion fall into one of two errors. Either they find that their emotions run dry and that their prayer seems to be “without fruit.” Therefore they conclude that they are wasting their time and give up their efforts, in order to satisfy their craving for sensations in some other way.

Or else they belong to the category of those whose emotions are inexhaustible. They can almost always weep at prayer. They can quite easily produce sentiments of fervor, with a little concentration and the right kind of effort, whenever they desire them. But this is a dangerous form of success. Emotional versatility is a help at the beginning of the interior life, but later on it may be an obstacle to progress. At the beginning, when our senses are easily attracted to created pleasures, our emotions will keep us from turning to God unless they themselves can be given some enjoyment

and awareness of the value of prayer. Thus the taste for spiritual things has to start out with a humble and earthly beginning, in the senses and in feeling. But if our prayer always ends in sensible pleasure and interior consolation we will run the risk of resting in these things which are by no means the end of the journey.

There is always a danger of illuminism and false mysticism when those who are easily swayed by fancy and emotion take too seriously the vivid impulses they experience in prayer, and imagine that the voice of their own exalted feeling is really the voice of God.

The proper atmosphere of meditation is one of tranquillity and peace and balance. The mind should be able to give itself to simple and peaceful reflection. Intellectual brilliance is never required. The will should find itself directed toward the good and strengthened in its desire for union with God. It does not have to feel itself enkindled with raptures of ardent love. Α good meditation may well be quite “dry” and “cold” and “dark.” It may even be considerably disturbed by involuntary distractions. St. John of the Cross says somewhere that “The best fruit grows in land that is cold and dry.” But this arid meditation nevertheless fills the soul with humility, peace, courage, and the determination to persevere in negotiating the obstacles to our spiritual progress. Our meditations may be habitually quite prosaic and even a little dull. That does not matter, if they succeed in bringing the depths of our intelligence and will into a direct focus upon the things of God, no matter how obscure our spiritual vision may happen to be.

A good meditation does not necessarily give us an absolutely clear perception of the spiritual truth that we are seeking. On the contrary, as we progress in the interior life our grasp of divine things, in mental prayer, tends to become somewhat indefinite because our minds find themselves in the presence of mysteries too vast for human comprehension. It is necessarily impossible for the human mind on this earth to have a clear, comprehensive perception of the things of God as they really are in themselves. The contemplative “experience” of divine things is achieved in the darkness of “pure faith,” in a certitude that does not waver, though it cannot grasp any clear human evidence for its support.

This cannot be understood unless we remember one absolutely fundamental truth: that the power of meditation is generated not by reasoning but by faith. It can be said, without fear of error, that our meditation is as good as our faith. Hence the aim we should keep in view, when we meditate, is not so much the penetration of divine truths with our intelligence, as the firm grasp of faith which enables us to embrace these truths with our entire being. This does not mean that intelligence is excluded from mental prayer, and replaced by a kind of pietistic obscurantism. For faith is after all an act of

the intelligence, as well as of the will, elevated to a supernatural level by the light of divine grace. Everyone who meditates should realize the full import of St. Anselm’s dictum : credo at intelligam, “I believe in order that I may understand.” Only firm faith can bring any real spiritual light to our life of prayer. In order to practice this faith, we need to concentrate upon certain sayings of Christ Our Lord in the Gospel, or other words of the divinely inspired Scriptures, and reaffirm our faith and our conviction that these are, in all truth, the words of salvation, the treasure hidden in the field, for which we must sell everything else, abandon every other truth, in order that we may come to God. We should let these “words of salvation” sink deeply into our hearts and take full possession of them. It is precisely when our prayer is dry that we can most fruitfully exercise our faith in this manner. And remember that faith can at times require much struggle and effort. Above all if it is honest. For we may have to face great difficulties and human uncertainties, and face them with sincere minds. Faith is a risk and a challenge, and it is most pure when we have to pay for it with effort and spiritual sacrifice. Such effort and sacrifice have their place in meditation.

If our mental vision of God and of the way to God tends to lose its sharp outlines in the “cloud of unknowing,” there should never be any real confusion as to the object we are seeking : union with God.

Mental prayer need not make us see the God we seek, but it should always confirm us in our determination to seek Him and no other. It may not always show us clearly the way to find Him; but it should always leave us more and more convinced that there is nothing else worth finding. Therefore, although the object of our prayer may be hidden in darkness, meditation nevertheless makes it ever more and more clear that this object is the one goal of all our efforts. In this sense God and the way to God become more and more perfectly “defined” as we advance in mental prayer.

Writers on mental prayer often stress the fact that meditation should bear fruit in particular virtues and other immediate, practical results. And it is quite true that meditation has a practical purpose since it must enlighten our actions and make them all bear fruit in communion with God.

Meditation can therefore be considered in relation to two ends, one of which leads to the other. The immediate end of our mental prayer may be the understanding of some particular truth, the resolution to embrace a particular course of action, the solution of a spiritual problem, all of which prepare us for the reception of a very definite and particular grace necessary for the practical fulfillment of our daily duties.

But the ultimate end of all mental prayer is communion with God. Of course it is quite true that meditation disposes us for an immediate practical end on earth, with a view to our future union with God in heaven. But what I mean to emphasize here is that every meditation, every act of mental prayer, even if it may have some immediate practical purpose, should also bring us into direct communion with God. This is the true fruit of meditation. Every other immediate practical purpose is secondary and subordinate to this one principle and all important end.

Let me take an example. Suppose that I meditate upon the patience of our Lord Jesus Christ in His Passion. Suppose that I do so with an immediate practical end : to help myself practice patience in a difficult situation which confronts me. My interior vision will be concentrated upon the Redeemer who, without anger or contempt, without rancor or perturbation, silently and with supreme interior tranquillity accepted the gravest injustice and ingratitude, not to mention the most painful of physical and moral suffering. I will see that He was able to undergo all this with a pure and disinterested mercy for all men, including those who put Him to death.

I will also realize that in doing so He was not merely leaving me an example to admire from a distance. By virtue of my baptismal vows I am obliged to follow that example and to reproduce in myself something of His patience, meekness and tranquillity under suffering. Jesus Himself said, “He who does not take up hiscross and come after me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).

Therefore, with all this before my mind, I will begin to desire with all the power of my will to practice this same patience according to my capacity in my own trials. Knowing at the same time the weakness and imperfection of my own soul fettered by attachments, I will above all pray earnestly and humbly for the grace without which I can never hope to conquer my impatience, irritability, aggressiveness and self-righteous impulses to judge and punish other men.

Such a meditation is directly ordered to an immediate practical end. It is aimed at the practice of patience. It seeks the grace that will make me strong enough to be meek. Meekness and non-violent resistance to evil both require the highest kind of fortitude, a fortitude which can come to me only from the cross of Christ !

If well made, my meditation will bear fruit in an increase of fortitude in patience. My patience will help me to endure trials in such a way that my soul will be purified of many imperfections and obstacles to grace. I will learn to know better the sources of anger in myself. I will then grow in charity, and since charity is the source of supernatural merit, I will merit a higher degree of union with God in heaven.

Also, of course, I will be a more charitable and virtuous person here on earth. But that alone is not what I mean by the ultimate end of meditation. The ultimate

end of meditation should be a more intimate communion with God not only in the future but also here and now.

Therefore, in order to make a really deep and mature meditation on the Passion of Christ, I must become spiritually identified with Christ in His Passion. This recalls what has been said above about our union with Christ in the Mass and especially at Holy Communion. The words of Pius XII concerning the liturgy might equally well be applied to Christian meditation; its function is to “reproduce in our hearts the likeness of the divine Redeemer through the mystery of the Cross.”

Not that we must never meditate on any other mystery than the Passion; but since all grace flows from the pierced side of Christ on the Cross, the Passion of Christ is in fact the meritorious and efficient principle of our union with God and of our supernatural transformation. This is clear in the second chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians in which the Apostle declares that Christ on the Cross restored peace between man and man as well as between mankind and God. Christ has in fact taken all our enmities and “killed them in Himself upon the Cross,” so that He is our “peace” and in Him we are all united, in one Spirit, with God the Father (Ephesians 2:11-22). Clearly the Cross and Resurrection of Christ are the very center of Christian mysticism.

This great theological truth makes it unnecessary to inquire, at great length, in what our “communion” or “identification” with Jesus in mental prayer must consist.

This communion is not merely a psychological identification, a matter of emotional sympathy in which we stir up in our hearts what we imagine to have been the sentiments of the Redeemer on the Cross. Nor is this communion simply a moral one, in which we strive by our mind and will to produce in ourselves His ethical dispositions. Our identification with Jesus is spiritual and should, in many cases, also be sacramental or quasi-sacramental.

I mean by this that it is a union or identification in the order of grace or love. Grace comes to us above all by the use of prayer, the sacramentals and the sacraments. I have adopted the term “quasi-sacramental” to cover situations in which our mental prayer prolongs and develops our fruitful reception of the sacraments or in which, for instance, we meditate with the help of such sacramentals as the Bible, the Way of the Cross, or the rosary.

Grace is the principle of supernatural and spiritual life. It makes us sons of God. That is to say, it makes us live spiritually by the divine life itself. Nor is this divine life in our souls merely a figure of speech. Life expresses itself in vital activities. The supernatural life of grace not only vivifies the whole organism of the Mystical Body of Christ but also produces, in each of its living

members, the activities of virtue and the life of contemplation which are the manifestation of God’s special presence in the soul.

Now this life of grace is the life of Christ, the true Son of God. We share God’s life through the merits of the Passion of Christ. By participating mystically in His Passion and death we become sons of God by adoption as He is the Son of God by nature. Our adoptive sonship is immersed, as it were, in the divine life which Jesus possesses by His own right as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. St. Thomas holds that Christ, as the “Head” of the Mystical Body, has the power to pour out grace into all the members of that Body, and this is not merely a theologian’s opinion. The Church teaches us that in actual fact Jesus constantly sends forth the life-giving streams of grace into the souls of all those who are united to Him.

This very brief outline is sufficient to enable anyone to understand the one big principle upon which our identification with Christ in contemplative prayer must depend. Here is the principle. All the members of the Mystical Body of Christ have, in actual fact, the divine life of Christ within them and are “mystically” identified with Him in a broad sense of the word. This identification is effected by the reception of baptism or by any act of faith or contrition vivified by perfect charity. The identification is real, and it is in fact our supernatural life. However, we are not conscious of it. The identifi

cation which we seek to effect in mental prayer is therefore a conscious realization of the union that is already truly ellected between our souls and God by grace.

This is the secret of mental prayer, as it is also the secret of contemplation. Unless our mental prayer does something to awaken in us a consciousness of our union with God, of our complete dependence upon Him for all our vital acts in the spiritual life, and of His constant loving presence in the depths of our souls, it has not achieved the full effect for which it is intended.

Contemplative souls generally have a special attraction to the presence of God within them, or to some other form of consciousness of God’s nearness to their intimate being. This is a grace which, though quite normal in the spiritual life, is not shared by all. But even those who do not have this particular attraction ought to realize that the function of their mental prayer is to bring them somehow into conscious communion with the God who is the source of their natural and supernatural life and the principle of all the good that is in them.

Meditation is really very simple and there is not much need of elaborate techniques to teach us how to go about it. But that does not mean that mental prayer can be practiced without constant and strict interior discipline. This is especially true in our own time when the intellectual and moral flabbiness of a materialistic society has robbed man’s nature of its spiritual energy and tone. Nevertheless, the necessity for discipline does not imply the obligation for all men to follow one identical and rigid system. There is a difference between being strict and being rigid. The well-disciplined soul, like a well-disciplined body, is agile, supple and adaptable. A soul that is not pliable and free is incapable of progress in the ways of prayer. An unwise rigidity may seem to produce results at first, but it only ends by paralyzing the interior life.

There are however certain universal requirements for the sane practice of mental prayer. They cannot be neglected.

In order to meditate, I have to withdraw my mind from all that prevents me from attending to God presentin my heart. This is impossible unless I recollect my senses. But it is almost useless to try to recollect myself at the moment of prayer if I have allowed my senses and imagination to run wild all the rest of the day. Consequently the desire to practice meditation implies the effort to preserve moderate recollection throughout the day. It means living in an atmosphere of faith and with occasional moments of prayer and attention to God. The world in which we live today presents a tantalizing problem to anyone who wants to acquire habits of recollection.

The price of true recollection is a firm resolve to take no wilful interest in anything that is not useful or necessary to our interior life. The world we live in assails us on every side with useless appeals to emotion and to sense appetite. Radios, newspapers, movies, television, billboards, neon-signs surround us with a perpetual incitement to pour out our money and our vital energies in futile transitory satisfactions. The more we buy the more they urge us to buy. But the more they advertise the less we get. And yet, the more they advertise the more we buy. Eventually all will consist in the noise that is made and there will be no satisfaction left in the world except that of vain hopes and anticipations that can never be fulfilled.

I say this in order to show that very much of what we read in magazines or newspapers or see and hear in movies or elsewhere, is completely useless from every

point of view. The first thing I must do if I want to practice meditation is to develop a strong resistance to the futile appeals which modern society mattes to my five senses. Hence I will have to mortify my desires.

I do not speak here of extraordinary ascetic practices; merely of self-denial required to live by the standards of reason and of the Gospels. In present-day America, such self-denial is apt to require heroism. In practice it may mean giving up many or most of the luxuries which I have come to regard as necessities, at least until I have acquired sufficient self-control to use these things without being enslaved by them.

In order to make a serious and fruitful meditation we must enter into our prayer with a real sense of our need for these fruits. It is not enough to apply our minds to spiritual things in the same way as we might observe some natural phenomenon, or conduct a scientific experiment. In mental prayer we enter a realm of which we are no longer the masters and we propose to ourselves the consideration of truths which exceed our natural comprehension and which, nevertheless, contain the secret of our destiny. We seek to enter more deeply into the life of God. But God is infinitely above us, although He is within us and is the principle of ourbeing. The grace of close union with Him, although it is something we can obtain by prayer and good works, remains nevertheless His gift to us.

One who begs an alms must adopt a different attitude from one who demands what is due to him by his own right. A meditation that is no more than a dispassionate study of spiritual truths indicates no desire, on our part, to share more fully in the spiritual benefits which are the fruit of prayer. We have to enter into our meditation with a realization of our spiritual poverty, our complete lack of the things we seek, and of our abject nothingness in the sight of the infinite God.

The Prodigal Son in the parable can serve as our model. Having wasted his patrimony in a distant country, he was starving to death, unable even to get his hands on a few of the husks which were thrown to the swine he tended. But he “entered into himself.” He meditated on his condition. His meditation was brief and to the point. He said to himself: “Here I am dying of hunger, while at home in my father’s house the servants have plenty to eat. I will return to my own country and to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Will you take me in as one of your hired servants ?”

The Fathers of the Church saw that every one of us is more or less like the Prodigal, starving in a distant land, far from our Father’s House. This is the common

condition of mankind exiled from God and from Paradise by an inordinate preoccupation with perishing things and by a constant inclination to self-gratification and sin. Since this is in fact our position, and since our mental prayer is a journey from time into eternity, from the world to God, it follows that we cannot make a good meditation unless we realize, at least implicitly, the starting point of our journey.

This is true in one way or another on every level of the spiritual life. The saints are, as a matter of fact, much more keenly aware of the gulf between themselves and God than are those who live always on the periphery of sin. As we advance in the interior life it generally becomes less and less necessary for us to stir up in ourselves this feeling of exile and of spiritual need. The soul that is only dimly enlightened by God has very little conception of its own indigence. The most serious faults seem to it to be quite harmless.

Habitual self-complacency is almost always a sign of spiritual stagnation. The complacent no longer feel in themselves any real indigence, any urgent need for God. Their meditations are comfortable, reassuring and inconclusive. Their mental prayer quickly degenerates into day-dreaming, distractions or plain undisguised sleep. For this reason trials and temptations can prove to be a real blessing in the life of prayer, simply because they force us to pray. It is when we begin to find out ourneed for God that we first learn how to make a real meditation.

One who has reached a certain proficiency in the interior life can normally practice some form of mental prayer anywhere and under almost any conditions. But beginners and proficients alike need to devote some part of the day to formal meditation. This means choosing a time and place propitious for mental prayer, and the exclusion of all possible obstacles to meditation. It should not be necessary to remark that we can best meditate in silence and retirement — in a chapel, in a garden, a room, a cloister, a forest, a monastic cell.

Religious communities have a set time for the practice of mental prayer. Sometimes the meditation degenerates into a dreary routine of “points” read from a pious book followed by intervals of silence and communal wool-gathering. Discouraging as this procedure may sometimes be, there is nothing in it that makes a good meditation essentially impossible. The very superficiality of the “points” may well awaken in us an acute sense of spiritual indigence and make us seek the living God with deep anguish and humility!

The trouble is however that human nature yields easily to exasperation under the pressure of mechanical routine. Exasperation foments interior rebellion, which is an obstacle to good mental prayer. Nevertheless there will always be docile and humble spirits who will quietly recollect themselves and listen to the “points” and receive with deep gratitude the slightest suggestion they may offer. Such souls are capable of progress in spite of the apparent mediocrity of their environment.

Nevertheless, passive acceptance of mediocrity is an obstacle to progress in prayer. The chief trouble with pre-digested meditations imposed mechanically upon a whole group is that they tend to bring meditation into disrepute — especially in seminaries where the victims of this system do not hesitate to detect the faintest shadow of stupidity or artificiality and make it the subject of frivolous comment.

The religious orders have their mental prayer in common but systematization and routine are usually foreign to their spirit. Communal mental prayer presents no unusual problems in a contemplative monastery, provided the rule is kept and the proper conditions of silence and good order are maintained.

Everyone should try to set aside some part of the day in which he can pray under conditions which seem to be most favorable for himself. This does not mean that we should try to gratify ourselves even in spiritual things, but it is legitimate and even in some cases necessary for us to seek an atmosphere that really helps us topray. Anyone who seriously wants to meditate should be allowed reasonable liberties in this regard.

Naturally speaking, the best position for meditation is a seated one. The sitting position is favored by a certain type of contemplative, and a quotation from that charming fourteenth-century mystic, Richard Rolle, may be adduced in witness to the fact: He says (in the Form of Perfect Living)

I have loved for to sit: for no penance, nor fantasy, nor that I wished men to talk of me, nor for no such thing: but only because I knew that I loved God more and longer lasted within the comfort of love than going, or standing, or kneeling. For sitting I am most at rest, and my heart most upward. But therefore peradventure it is not best that another should sit, as I did and will do to my death, save he were disposed in soul as I was.

Religious custom makes it easy for Catholics to meditate on their knees. It is usually better to remain quiet, to be still. But there is no reason why one should not also meditate walking up and down in a garden. In short, there is an almost infinite variety of places and positions that can be adopted in mental prayer. They are all accidental. The most important thing is to seek silence, tranquillity, recollection and peace.

The only thing that remains to be added, before we pass on, is a reminder of the importance of leisure in the life of prayer. Leisure is so poorly understood by some religious people that it is regarded as almost synonymous with idleness. Without making any distinction between fruitful and sterile leisure, these busybodies condemn all desire for leisure as a sin. They believe that a man who is not always on the move is wasting precious time. They do not realize the meaning of St. Thomas’s definition of laziness. Laziness, says the Angelic Doctor, is a weariness of and distaste for what is good. He does not say that laziness is distaste for work, because he is careful not to identify work, as such, with what is simply “good.” Yet it is true that our fallen nature needs to labor and suffer in order to arrive at its highest good, spiritual good. It follows that in most cases our laziness is, in fact, a distaste for the labor that is required if we are to procure this good for ourselves. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the highest spiritual good is an action which is so perfect that it is absolutely free of all labor, and is therefore at the same time perfect action and perfect rest. And this is the contemplation of God.

Now the Fathers of the Church well understood the importance of a certain “holy leisure” — otium sanctum. We cannot give ourselves to spiritual things if we are always swept off our feet by a multitude of external activities. Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and this pure love is a delicate plant that grows best where there is plenty of time for it to mature.

This truth rests on an obvious natural foundation. Someone has said, “It takes time to be a genius.” Many promising artists have been ruined by a premature success which drove them to overwork themselves in order to make money and renew again and again the image of themselves they have created in the public mind. An artist who is wise thinks more than he paints and a poet who respects his art burns more than he publishes. So too, in the interior life, we cannot hope to pray well unless we allow ourselves intervals of silent transition between work and formal prayer. In trying to turn out too much work for God we may well end up by doing nothing for Him at all and losing our interior life at the same time. St. Therese of Lisieux wisely reminds us that “God has no need of our works: He has need of our love.”

The ideal of the contemplative life is not, however, the exclusion of all work. On the contrary, total inactivity would stultify the interior life just as much as too much activity. The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer. For such a one the whole day long is otium sanctum. His prayer, his reading, his labor all alike give him recreation and rest. One balances the other. Prayer makes it easy to work, work helps him to return with a mind refreshed for prayer. These conditions are well fulfilled in the sane, quiet round of St. Benedict’s monastic day of liturgy, meditative reading and manual work in the fields.

Mental prayer is by its nature personal and individual. In common vocal prayer, and in the liturgy, it is understood that the words we utter with our lips may not necessarily express the spontaneous feelings of our heart at the moment. When we unite with others in liturgical prayer, we put aside our sentiments of the moment in order to unite with the thoughts and desires of the community, expressed in the liturgical prayers. These then become our own sentiments and raise us above our individual level, to the level of the mystical Christ, praying in the liturgy.

In mental prayer, it is still the mystical Christ who prays in us, but in a different way. The private prayer of an individual is still in some sense a prayer of the Church, but it has no official and public character. Yet it is the prayer of the Holy Spirit in a member of Christ, in one who is by his baptism “another Christ.” The desires and sorrows of our heart in prayer rise to the heavenly Father as the desires and sorrows of His Son, by virtue of the Holy Spirit who teaches us to pray, and who, though we do not always know how to pray as we ought, prays in us, and cries out to the Father in us.

For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear; but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry Abba, (Father). For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ : yet so, if we suffer with Him, that we may be glorified with Him... .

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit Himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings.
And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what the Spirit desireth ; because He asketh for the saints according to God. (Romans 8:15-17, 26, 27.)

is to awaken the Holy Spirit within us, and to bring our hearts into harmony with His voice, so that we allow the Holy Spirit to speak and pray within us, and

lend Him our voices and our affections that we may become, as far as possible, conscious of His prayer in our hearts.

This implies a difficult and constant attention to the sincerity of our own hearts. We should never say anything in mental prayer that we do not really mean, or at least sincerely desire to mean. One of the reasons why our mental prayer easily grows cold and indifferent is that we begin with aspirations that we do not feel or cannot really mean at the moment. For instance, we fall

on our knees out of habit, and without directing our attention to God we begin to tell Him that we love

Him, in a more or less exterior and mechanical fashion, hardly even aware of what we are saying. It is true, that we have a more or less habitual desire to love God, and if we attend to what we are doing we are capable of “purifying our intention” more or less as if we were using a mental windshield-wiper, wiping away juridical specks of self-love. We don’t really want things that go contrary to God and to His will.

Nevertheless, is it quite sincere for us to express deep sentiments of love which we do not feel ? Especially if in actual fact our hearts are quite cold and our minds are pretty much taken up with distractions which, though we do not formally will them, are nevertheless in almost complete possession of our hearts at the moment?

Here sincerity excludes spiritual laziness. At such a time, the sincere thing to do is to regret one’s distracted state, and tο make an honest effort to pray while admitting that really one has begun without any desire to pray and has just started out of routine.

Sincerity demands that we do what we can to break the grip of routine on our souls, even if it means being a little unconventional. If we really do not feel like praying, it seems at least more honest to recognize that fact before God than to assure Him that we are burning up with fervor. If we admit the truth, we will start out on a basis of humility, recognize the need for effort, and perhaps we will be rewarded with a little of the graceof compunction, which is the most precious of all helps in mental or any other kind of prayer.

Compunction is simply an awareness of ovr indigence and coldness and of our need for God. It implies faith, sorrow, humility and above all hope in the mercy of God. For the man without compunction, prayer is a cold formality in which he remains centered on himself. For the man who has a sense of compunction, prayer is a living act which brings him face to face with God in an I-Thou relationship which is not imaginary but real, spiritual and personal; and the basis of this reality is our sense of our need for God, united with faith in His love for us.

If we compare the sobriety of the liturgy with the rather effusive emotionalism of books of piety which are supposed to help Christians to “meditate,” we can see at once that liturgical prayer makes sincerity much easier. The liturgy takes man as he is: a sinner who seeks the mercy of God. The book of piety sometimes takes him as he is only on very rare occasions : on fire with exalted and heroic love, ready to lay down his life in martyrdom, or on the point of feeling his heart pierced by the javelin of mystical love. Most of us, unfortunately, are not ready to lay down our lives in martyrdom most days at six o’clock in the morning or whenever our mental prayer may occur, and most of us have little or nothing to do with javelins of mystical love.

Mental prayer should be affective, it should be a work of love. But it should not be operatic, or a work of spiritual melodrama. The super-affective quality of some pious literature is a remnant of the baroque piety and mysticism of past centuries — a piety and mysticism peculiar to Italy, France and Spain in the τηth and 18th centuries. This particular form of piety was, perhaps, a result of the vulgarization of the spirituality of several great modern saints who exercised a decisive influence on Catholic piety during the period.

One should be able to rise above mere fashions in piety, especially when these fashions wear themselves out. If we go back to the saints themselves, we find a much more pure, sober and virile spirituality than in their more superficial followers.

In reaction against the over-enthusiastic affectivity of such piety, there is perhaps a tendency, in modern America especially, to become colloquial and informal in the extreme. One chats amicably with “Jesus” and “Mary.” Our Lady becomes “Mom.” St. Joseph is “Dad.” And we “just tell them all about ourselves, all day long.” This can, in the long run, become even more artificial and dbnoxious than the worst flights of baroque opera. Some people may feel as if this sort of thing is “spontaneous” because it happens to flow easily and without effort. But it may simply be a kind of pose they have picked up from what we might call the “comic book school of spirituality.” It flourishes today in the popular religious press.

We have already seen that progress in the life of prayer means the emergence of one dominant attraction — a concentration of the interior life on one objective, union with God. We have remarked that this objective is usually obscure to our experience. The desire for God becomes more intense and more continual, and at the same time our knowledge of Him, rising above precise and definite concepts, becomes “dark” and even confused. Hence the anguish of the mystic who seeks God in the night of pure faith, above the level of human ideas, knowing Him not by light but by darkness. Contemplative prayer apprehends God by love rather than by positive knowledge. But this union of love, which gives the soul an “experience” of God, is effected in the soul by the action of the Holy Spirit, not by the soul’s own efforts.

At the beginning of the life of prayer it would be a manifest error to seek this simple and obscure unification of our faculties in God by simply abandoning all efforts to think, to reason, or to meditate discursively. Meditation is the normal path to contemplative prayer. We have to start out with certain simple concepts. Meditation makes use of definite theological and philosophical ideas of God. It deals with ideas and principles which, when the soul is enlightened by faith and moved to action by charity, bear fruit in deep supernatural convictions.

The success of meditative prayer depends on our ability to apply our faculties to these revealed truths collectively referred to as “The Word of God.” Therefore, meditation must have a definite subject. In the beginning of the life of prayer, the more definite and concrete we are in our meditations the better off we will be. The discipline of concentrating on a particular, clear-cut subject tends to unify the faculties and thus to dispose them remotely for contemplative prayer.

The choice of a subject is obviously important in meditation. And it is immediately evident that since meditation is a personal and intimate form of spiritual activity, the choice should be personal. Most people do not meditate well on a “topic” imposed by someone else, especially if it is something abstract.

The normal subject of meditation, according to the Christian ascetic tradition, will be some mystery of the Christian faith. There is a difference between a mystery and a dogma. A dogma of the faith is a more abstract,authoritative statement of the truth to be believed, couched in its official formulation. Meditation on a dogma, in this technical sense, is bound to be a little cold and abstract, though there are minds that might thrive on it.

A mystery is not just the distilled and decanted formulation of a revealed truth, but that whole truth in all its concrete manifestation; in the mysteries of the faith we see God Himself, generally in one of those great theandric actions in which He has revealed Himself to us in a concrete and tangible form, has carried out the work of our redemption, communicated to us a share in His divine life and united us to Himself.

To meditate on a mystery of the faith in this sense means first of all to perceive it externally as it is presented to us, as part of the Church’s experience. The Church’s experience of the mysteries, if such a phrase may be permitted, is handed down from age to age in tradition. Tradition is the renewal, in each Christian generation and society, of the experiential knowledge of the mysteries of the faith. Each new age of Christendom renews its faith and its grasp of the mystery of salvation, the mystery of man united to God in Christ, and each age renews this fundamental experience of the Christian mystery in its own characteristic way.

To enter into the mysteries of the faith by meditation, guided by the spirit of the Church, especially by the spirit of the liturgy and of Christian art, is to renew in

oneself the Church’s experience of those mysteries by participating in them. And of course the full participation of the Christian in the mystery of Christ is sacramental, public, liturgical: in the sacraments and at Mass. Hence the close relationship between private meditation and the public worship of the Church.

The obvious approach to this subject is first of all to see the mystery as the Church sees it: hence, we meditate on the Gospel of the Annunciation, or the Gospel account of the Nativity — especially in the liturgical context of the Masses for Christmas or of the Annunciation. Christian meditation on the Incarnation is nourished by the sacramental experience of this mystery, as it is lived and celebrated liturgically by the Church.

This “external” grasp of the mystery involves activity of the senses, the imagination, the emotions, the feelings, the affections. A Christian, by meditation and by participating in liturgical worship, comes to feel and act as if he had been present among the shepherds at Bethlehem. Bethlehem is part of his life. He is completely familiar with the Nativity as though it were an event in his own history. And indeed it is, though on a mystical and invisible level. The function of meditation is first of all then to enable us to see and experience the mysteries of the life of Christ as real and present factors in our own spiritual existence.

To make this experience deeper and more personal,meditation seeks to read the inner meaning beneath the surface of the exterior, and also, (most important of all) to relate the historical events given us in the Gospels with our own spiritual life here and now.

In simple terms, the Nativity of Christ the Lord in Bethlehem is not just something that I make present by fantasy. Since He is the eternal Word of God before whom time is entirely and simultaneously present, the Child born at Bethlehem “sees” me here and now. That is to say, I “am” present to His mind “then.” It follows that I can speak to Him as to one present not only in fantasy but in actual reality. This spiritual contact with the Lord is the real purpose of meditation.

From this simple example we see, once again, that the real function of meditation is to enable us to realize and to actualize in our own experience the fundamental truths of our faith.

Our own life, our own experience, our own duties and difficulties, naturally enter into our meditations. Actually, a lot of “distractions” would vanish if we realized that we are not bound at all times to ignore the practical problems of our life when we are at prayer. On the contrary, sometimes these problems actually ought to be the subject of meditation. After all, we have to meditate on our vocation, on our response to God’s will in our regard, on our charity towards other people, on our fidelity to grace. This enters into our meditations on Christ and His life ; for He desires and intends to live in us. The Christ-life has, as its most important aspect for each of us, His actual presence and activity in our own lives.

Hence we cannot help sometimes meditating on our Own lives, on what we have done, on what has happened to us, on what we intend to do. But in the event that these things intrude upon our prayer unexpectedly, we should tie them in with our faith in Christ and in Divine Providence. We should try to see our lives in the light of His providential will for us and for mankind. And by the same token we must sometimes meditate on the events of the history of our time and try to penetrate their terrible significance.

I would be inclined to say that a nun who has meditated on the Passion of Christ but has not meditated on the extermination camps of Dachau and Auschwitz has not yet fully entered into the experience of Christianity in our time. For Dachau and Auschwitz are two terrible, indeed apocalyptic, presentations of the reality of the Passion renewed in our time. Many pious people might be inclined to think that such things were “distractions” and attempt to exclude them from their minds. If such a revulsion were elevated to a level of strict principle and unvarying policy, it would lead to a complete lack of realism in the spiritual life. Suchthings should be known, thought about, understood in prayer. Indeed, the contemplative above all should ruminate on these terrible realities which are so symptomatic, so important, so prophetic.

The only reservation to be made here is with regard to one’s approach to these things. Obviously the newspapers or news magazines give only a superficial and generally slanted view of events, and a view so shallow and secularized that it cannot possibly lend itself to “meditation” or serious thought at all. One has to see these things with a little depth, and without partisan prejudice. Otherwise one’s meditation will be nothing but a jumble of absurd political clichés and self-complacent rationalizations which will be worse than useless, and will of course really prove harmful to the inner life.

Let us not forget the importance of meditation in the life of a man like Gandhi, one of the few really outstanding spiritual figures who had a part to play in modern political life. With him, it was a religious and spiritual obligation to understand, by meditation, the inner significance of events and political pressures, not in order to gain power but in order to liberate and defend man, the image of God.

In order to understand even the trivial events of our own lives, we need to create a religious perspective in which to view everything that happens. This perspective demands first of all that we frequently renew the realization of the fact that we must die and that our life must pass through the inexorable light of judgment. One who never thinks of the hour of his death cannot make really spiritual decisions during his life. He will never be anything more than a short-sighted opportunist whose decisions will have no lasting value.

Above all, our life should always be seen in the light of the Cross. The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ the Lord have entirely changed the meaning and orientation of man’s existence and of all that he does. One who cannot realize this will spend his life building a spider’s web that has no substance and no real reason for existence.

A meditation that passes superficially over many topics ends by being no meditation at all. It only weakens and dissipates our faculties, leaving them slack and unprofitable. They have been incited to work, but no work has been done.

In order to learn to gather our faculties on one point it is well to begin meditating with the help of a book. I do not mean that one must necessarily use a book of formally prepared meditations. Any serious book about the things of God and the spiritual life can provide us with matter on which to concentrate our minds. But in order to focus our minds on any truth, we normallyneed the help of our senses. Therefore, at the beginning of the spiritual life, it is usually best to meditate on truths that present themselves under some concrete form, for instance in a parable or in some graphic saying or action of one of the saints, or of Christ our Lord.

All the ancient philosophies and all the higher forms of religious thought have made use of parables and simple imaginative figures to convey the deepest truths, and nowhere is this more true than in the Bible. Here God has revealed to us His mysteries with a graphic simplicity and concreteness which makes them accessible to every race and century. There is therefore no better book of meditations than the Bible, and especially the New Testament. Lectio Diving, or the meditative reading of Sacred Scripture, was considered by the Fathers of the Church to be the normal foundation for an interior life of meditation and prayer.

An even simpler and more helpful approach to meditation is to make a deep reflective reading of the liturgical texts from the Old and New Testaments as they are presented to us, for instance, Sunday by Sunday, in the Missal. In this way our meditations can be perfectly co-ordinated with the liturgical cycle. This has the advantage of bringing our minds and hearts into a more perfect union with the prayer of the whole Church and thus disposing us to receive in greater abundance the graces which God pours out upon the world in answer to that prayer.

Here it might be worthwhile to outline the simple essentials of meditative prayer, in schematic form. ι) Preliminary : a sincere effort of recollection, a realization of what you are about to do, and a prayer of petition for grace. If this beginning is well made, the rest ought to follow easily.

2) Vision : — the attempt to see, to focus, to grasp what you are meditating on. This implies an effort of faith. Keep working until faith is clear and firm in your heart (not merely in your head).

3) Aspiration : — From what you “see” there follow certain practical consequences. Desires, resolutions to act in accordance with one’s faith, to live one’s faith. Here, an effort of hope is required — one must believe in the possibility of these good acts, one must hope in the fulfilment of good desires, with the help of God. Above all, one must have a sincere hope in the possibility of divine union.

4) Communion : — here the prayer becomes simple and uncomplicated. The realization of faith is solid, hope is firm, one can rest in the presence of God. This is more a matter of simple repose and intuition, an embrace of simple love. But if activity is required, let love have an active character, in which case the prayer is more like the last level (₃).Or love may take rather the form of listening to the Beloved. Or the form of praise. More often than not, we can be content to simply rest, and float peacefully with the deep current of love, doing nothing of ourselves, but allowing the Holy Spirit to act in the secret depths of our souls. If the prayer becomes confused or weak, we can return to one of the earlier stages, and renew our vigilance, our faith, our love.

The precise way in which each individual makes his meditation will depend in large measure upon his temperament and natural gifts. An intellectual and analytic mind will break down a text into its component parts, and follow the thought step by step, pausing in deep reflection upon each new idea, in order to examine it from different points of view and draw forth all its hidden implications, both speculative and practical.

But analysis must not go too far. The mind must ascend, by reasoning, to the threshold of intuition. Meditation enters into its full swing, for an intellectual, when his mind can grasp the whole content of the subject in one deep and penetrating gaze. Then he rests in this intuition, letting the truth sink in and become a part of himself. Above all, intuition, setting the intelligence temporarily at rest, should leave the will free to adapt itself to the practical consequences of the truth thus seen and to direct our whole life in accordance with it.

Such minds as these—which are a minority—can fruitfully meditate on an article of the Summa Theologica or on any other theological text. But even theycannot always be contented with an intellectual approach to supernatural things. For a theologian, in practice, mental prayer should become a kind of refuge from his speculative study, an oasis of affectivity to which he can retire to rest after his intellectual labor. In any case, the prayer of love is always higher than mere mental considerations. All mental prayer, whatever may be its beginnings, must terminate in love.

Other less speculative minds approach the truth with a more immediate intuition, apprehending it in its wholeness as beauty rather than as truth. The radiance that pours forth from a spiritual intuition of the real is a pure light that captivates the whole soul. Sensible beauty loses its grip on the mind that finds itself momentarily under the spell of that splendor veritatis, the radiance of truth, the “beauty ever ancient and ever new” which finally brought peace to the soul of St. Augustine.

The majority of men need to practice a way of meditation that is more firmly rooted in the senses. For these, concentration depends on a mental picture and an important element in their mental prayer will be the exercise which St. Ignatius Loyola calls “application of the senses.” In other words, they must take a concrete religious subject — a scene from the Gospels — and try to make all its sensible elements vividly real to their imagination.

This imaginative realization of a religious subject has a very definite practical purpose. It is supposed to pave the way for living spiritual contact with God. Meditating on the Gospels, we place ourselves, as far as we can, in the presence of Jesus. We arouse in our hearts the dispositions that we would hope to have if we were speaking with Him or listening to His words. We act interiorly just as if we were talking with our divine Redeemer. What Jesus said twenty centuries ago is also addressed to us now. He may not be physically present to me, here and now, as man, but He is present as God. His divinity, which is the center and source of my own being, is also the very Being of His Humanity. Consequently the Christ who lives and speaks in the Gospel is much more truly present to me than the persons around me with whom I speak and deal in my daily life.

It is therefore by no means a mere play of fancy to place ourselves in the presence of Christ in a scene from the New Testament. However, it must be remembered above all that the function of this technical device is to incite us to acts of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, which are the principles of Christ’s supernatural presence in our souls.

The true end of Christian meditation is therefore practically the same as the end of liturgical prayer and the reception of the sacraments: a deeper union by grace and charity with the Incarnate Word who is the only Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ.

The peculiar value of mental prayer however is that it is completely personal and favors a spiritual development along lines dictated by our own particular needs. The interior life demands of us a heroic struggle to practice virtue and to detach ourselves from inordinate love of temporal, created things. We cannot possibly bring our souls to renounce our most powerful natural desires unless we somehow have a real and conscious appreciation of our contact with something better. The love of God remains a cold and abstract thing unless we can bring ourselves to realize its deeply intimate and personal character. We can never hope, on earth, to achieve anything like a clear realization of what it means to be loved by the three divine Persons in one divine nature. But it is very easy to appreciate the love of God when we see it concretized in the human love of Jesus Christ for us. This is the best and most logical foundation for a life of faith and therefore this above all should be the primary object of meditation.

Meditation is spiritual work, sometimes difficult work. But it is a work of love and of desire. It is not something that can be practiced without effort, at least in the beginning. And the sincerity, humility and perseverance of our efforts will be proportionate to our desire. This desire in turn is a gift of grace. Anyone who imagines he can simply begin meditating without praying for the desire and the grace to do so, will soon give up. But the desire to meditate, and the grace to begin meditating, should be taken as an implicit promise of further graces. In meditation, as in anything else in the Christian life, everything depends on our correspondence with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Meditation is almost all contained in this one idea: the idea of awakening our interior self and attuning ourselves inwardly to the Holy Spirit, so that we will be able to respond to His grace. In mental prayer, over the years, we must allow our interior perceptivity to be refined and purified. We must attune ourselves to unexpected movements of grace, which do not fit our own preconceived ideas of the spiritual life at all, and which in no way flatter our own ambitious aspirations.

We must be ready to cooperate not only with graces that console, but with graces that humiliate us. Not only with lights that exalt us, but with lights that blast our self -complacency. Much of our coldness and dryness in prayer may well be a kind of unconscious defence against grace. Without realizing it, we allow our nature to de-sensitize our souls so that we cannot perceive graces which we intuitively foresee may prove to be painful.

Meditation is then always to be associated in practice with abandonment to the will and action of God. It goes hand in hand with self-renunciation and with obedience to the Holy Spirit. Meditation that does not seek to bring our whole being into conformity with God’s will must naturally remain sterile and abstract. But any sincere interior prayer that really seeks this one all important end — our conformity to God’s will in our regard— cannot fail to be rewarded by grace. It will prove, without question, to be one of the most sanctifying forces in our lives. And St. Teresa of Avila believed that no one who was faithful to the practice of meditation could possibly lose his soul.

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