Eucharistic Handbook ~ St. Peter Julian Eymard
Mental Prayer
One of the major laws of holiness is to know how to find time for one’s soul. The devil makes us waste it. Mental prayer, communing with God by ourselves, that is the first law.
The second law has to do with our generosity in doing the holy will of God by self-abnegation and love of duty; in doing things to please God.
The Practice of Mental Prayer
Become a saint; it is time that you do. To become a great saint, practice mental prayer generously; for the main thing is to want holiness and seek it relentlessly.
It is time to rally around Jesus, our Master. Try to draw as close as you can to Him and remain continually at His service. Strength is the virtue of the soldier, love the virtue of the child, and selfless devotedness the virtue of the apostle and the religious.
Secure these three virtues for yourselves; let them be a trinity of life to you. Strength is born of love; therefore, love much.
Love is born of ardent prayer; be therefore first of all a soul of prayer, but of a prayer that is your own, affectionate, recollected and recollecting, a prayer that relishes God, finds its nourishment in Him and is always athirst to learn more about the truth, the goodness, and the love of God. For the flame that stops burning sinks low or loses some of its light and is near its end; it dies out or is choked by its own smoke.
I should like to see in you one thing only: the desire, the hunger, the happiness of mental prayer in our Lord. Such a prayer would feed its own flame. It is a sick stomach that does not enjoy or digest food and never experiences hunger.
A rule of life is like a diet. You must be faithful to it, for your soul will always be satisfied after having nourished itself with God.
Only in mental prayer will you experience a delightful peace, a calm, a reposefulness that is often greater than at Holy Communion.
In mental prayer God nourishes us, whereas in Holy Communion it is often we that nourish God with the bread of suffering and the hard won fruits of virtue; that is why we often suffer after Holy Communion.
An Infallible means of Holiness
Apply yourself zealously to meditation; it is the compass of life and the food of virtue; it is the grace of the soul’s education by divine grace, by God Himself; it is the password of the whole day; say the password and you will spend a happy day.
Never abandon this fundamental practice, and do not be surprised if the devil, your enemy, assaults it so violently.
Saint Theresa has said: “The devil considers as good as lost to him the soul that perseveres in mental prayer.”
And Saint Alphonsus Liguori says it is the infallible means of holiness. “Meditation and sin,” he also says, “cannot live together.”
Without doubt meditation is usually laborious; it is sowed in pain and tears, but its fruits are delicious. And oddly enough, the more a meditation is dry, uninteresting, and fraught with temptations, the more fruitful and perfect it is; it becomes a Calvary of expiation and sanctification.
The difficulties attending it become the substance of the highest virtues and a source of the most precious graces. If we have the spirit of prayer, we lack nothing; it is the remedy to all our ills.
How to Make a Good Meditation
To succeed in mental prayer, we should make it at the awakening of both body and soul, when everything in us is in a state of peace and recollection. We should make our meditation the first thing in the morning. Some make it even before their morning prayer in order the better to profit by the recollectedness of the soul.
Determine, therefore, a special time for it, a half-hour or an hour, according to the time you dispose of. Before your meditation keep away from everything that might distract your attention.
When you cannot make it in the morning, make up for it with a short spiritual reading in the course of the day; your soul will then suffer no harm from the omission of it, and you will not lose sight of God, of your soul, or of your obligations.
Furthermore, in order to succeed in mental prayer, we must as much as possible go through with it in a calm and retired spot. That is why contemplatives seek places of solitude, the “clefts of the rock,” the most solitary spots at home or in church; they are nearer to God.
Pick out a favorite subject-matter of meditation, one that will be the soul of all other subjects. Certainly, divine love is the soul of all meditation, but you must obey the promptings of interior grace, such as devotion to the Passion of Jesus, or to the Blessed Sacrament, or to holy poverty, or to the presence of God.
Never forget these two great principles: the first, that the state of our soul during meditation is caused by the will of God, and that consequently, we must meditate according to our actual dispositions, according to which our actions are to be regulated and formed.
The second principle is that the supernatural success of our meditation depends solely on the grace of God, and that consequently, we must not, in order to secure it, rely on the beauty of our thoughts or on the fervor of our sentiments. We must, of course, use our faculties in God’s presence but as conditions to obtain His grace.
Go, therefore, to your meditation like a child in need, and it will always bring you happiness. Mental prayer is and must be nothing other than a humble and trustful exercise of our spiritual poverty. The poorer we are, the greater is our claim on divine charity; that is a thought which has proved such a godsend to many suffering souls.
“Meditation,” says Saint Augustine, “is the task assigned to our poverty in the presence of God.” Now what does a beggar do and what are his virtues?
His first virtue is humility. That is why he stands outside the door and speaks only a language of humility.
The second is patience. He knows how to wait and hope. Nothing discourages him; humiliations and rebuffs only serve to make him more eloquent.
The third is gratitude, which throws every door open to him and ends by winning for him love and esteem.
Be, therefore, the good beggar of the good God; turn your distractions, your aridities, even your sins into claims on His infinite goodness.
On Taking Resolutions
In your meditations do not stop at generalities. Take positive resolutions. Work at the correction of the same defect or at the acquiring of the same virtue for two or three weeks. You will not always be given the occasion to practice the virtue opposed to that defect; but you can always make positive acts of it and pray to God for it.
Select a book that suits you and read on until a thought strikes you, so as to avoid spiritual sloth which stands in the way of self-knowledge.
If you notice your mind is wandering and your faculties are not interested, change to something else. If you are in an ordinary state of soul, draw your meditation from the Following of Christ, after having at least selected the chapter or verse.
If you are in an extraordinary state of soul, choose a subject in keeping with that state: thus in a state of desolation, Chapter 21 of the First Book, and Chapters 9, 11, 12 of the Second Book; in a state of aversion to sacrifices, the chapters on love, and the three on heaven, 47, 48, 49 of the Third Book; in a state of distraction, Chapter 1 of the Second Book and the first chapters of the Third Book.
In these diverse states we must not treat our souls as we would a sick man who has no taste for anything.
The first resolution to take is to accept promptly and lovingly, as soon as the Good God points them out to us, the sacrifices of self-denial which He will ask of us during the day.
After that, we have only one thing to do: keep on the alert for the moment of sacrifice or, better, be ever ready to say to God, “My heart is ready, O my God, to do Your holy will in all things.”
But this alertness must be free, spontaneous, and without strain. It is love’s vigil. Love knows no fatigue; it watches while sleeping and working. Its perfection consists wholly in doing everything according to God’s will and in the spirit in which He wants it to be done.
A Delightful Contemplation
But to attain this state of living prayer, we must take great pains to forget about ourself in mental prayer, to do away with all self-seeking. We must especially simplify the role of the mind by a simple and calm consideration of divine truths.
The Good God, in fact, draws us to Himself only with His kindness, endears Himself to us only with the sweet gifts of His love. The heart lives on comparisons and surrenders itself to the greatest good it has known and enjoyed.
Let, therefore, the aim of your meditations be to nourish yourself with God rather than to purify or humble yourself; and for that purpose, feed your soul on truth as personified in God’s goodness toward you, in His tenderness and personal love.
The secret of genuine mental prayer lies in seeing the action and thought of God in His love for you. Amazed and overwhelmed, the soul cries out: “How good You are, O my God; What can I do for You? In what may I please You?” That is a flame straight from the heart.
When it is the soul’s good fortune to see meditation in this light, its meditation becomes a delightful contemplation; an hour of it goes by rapidly.
A Conversation with God
Go, therefore, to the Good God through love, through expansiveness of the heart, through an intimate conversation of the soul with Him in order to enjoy the peace which surpasses everything, the presence of God which takes the place of everything, and the loving contemplation of God which quickens everything.
Learn to converse with Jesus and Mary as intimately as you converse with your good mother. Learn to render to our Lord a detailed account of your soul, of your life. Know how to tell the Good God what you think, what you desire, what you grieve over.
Talk simply and artlessly with our Lord as if you held conversation with your own soul. Be a child full of love and openheartedness toward this good Master. And in this labor of love do not speak all the time, but know how to remain silent at the feet of Jesus; find your joy in seeing Him, in contemplating Him, in listening to Him, and in realizing that you are in His presence; the real language of love is rather interior than exterior.
The Good God has no need of our reflections or of our words to teach us how to love Him and to give us His holy grace, but He wants us to do all we can before His sovereign Majesty to prove to Him our good will.
When we have exhausted our meager resources, He comes to us and gives us His holy grace. In your meditation you should not, therefore, reflect so much as you should make acts of virtue; for example, when meditating on the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, you should first make an act of love at the sight of everything this good Savior has suffered for you.
You should follow this up with an act of thanksgiving for His having loved you so much, suffered so much for your sake, and made it known to you. Then, make an act of love for your sufferings, especially for those you have presently to put up with, and ask for the grace and love to suffer well for His love.
Have recourse to the Blessed Virgin, to the saints, that by their intercession they may obtain that grace for you; and take the resolution to suffer well, silently and patiently this and that other thing. You have there an excellent meditation.
How happy we are when we have understood this interior conversation with our Lord! We carry our treasure with us everywhere. It is the center of our heart and life. There is no happiness on earth without Jesus; no means, therefore, of being happy other than living with Jesus, the Bridegroom, the Father, the Life of our souls!
Ask the Blessed Virgin for this gift of prayer; it is the gift that contains all gifts.
Time spent with your children is valuable and never wasted. “If you spend the first ten years with your children, they will spend the next ten years with you.”
~ Maria von Trapp, Artist: Frederick Morgan
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An Introduction to the Devout Life is a book to be read with pencil in hand. It is a book to be read again and again. It is a book to make your guide for the rest of your life. It goes to the heart of becoming good. Its aim is to help you be rid of sin and even the inclinations to sin. Alone, its 10 brief meditations in Part I will orient you toward God for the rest of your life. No one will come away without being profoundly impressed and without being motivated to enter upon the devout life . . . which leads ultimately to God and to Heaven.
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