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In vocapitis mei et ego exaudium vos, you shall call upon me and I will hear you.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Dear brothers, dear sister, and dear faithful.
I wish to continue our instructions of how to do we make mental prayer an easy, simple way that hits home.
Now, thousands have excelled in mental prayer, although they were not even able to read,
and we shall see that this holy exercise cannot require any special power of mind or any degree
of culture.
Saint Isidore, a farm laborer, is an example of a man utterly devoid of human learning,
but rose by God's grace to the sublimest prayer.
I would recommend you to follow the method of St. Alphonsus,
a doctor of the Church, in making mental prayer,
because he makes...
The practice easy.
Now, mental prayer can be divided up into three parts.
Now, just like what I'm saying is,
just if you go to a recipe book,
you'll see the parts of all the ingredients
you need to make a meal,
and then how to make it, the method.
Now, it looks like complicated when you look
and you break it all up.
But once you know the method,
and once you know what ingredients,
it's very easy to make that every time.
It's the same thing here.
So when we break it up, it might look a bit complicated,
but it's actually very easy,
once you know what it consists of.
Mental prayer is divided into three parts; preparation, the body of the prayer, and the conclusion.
The preparation.
As for this, we need a recollected good life and regular spiritual reading are the best remote preparation because it helps you live in God's presence.
If you do that regularly, you won't need to just start with a spark and start to add kindling and, you know, to your meditation.
You immediately will be like gunpowder.
As soon as you go into mental prayer, you're already in the presence of God and you're making acts of love, petition and resolutions.
But the ordinary way, for most of us, this is what we need to do.
Normally, he says, Saint Alphonsus, we need to kneel in a traditional posture,
but any position, he says, sitting, standing, lying down, is acceptable as long as it does not lead to distraction.
"For the immediate preparation concentrate and make three short but fervent acts."
Now these short and fervent acts should take not more than a minute.
Remember we're talking about half an hour of mental prayer.
So just a minute, engage in an act of faith in your preparation, an act of sorrow for
sin and a petition for light and strength, now go through that.
An act of faith can be composed with acts of hope and love and adoration
of God present to your soul. For example, it doesn't have to be these words, but this is
what you could say, "Oh my God, I believe you are here really present, and I bow down before
you and adore you. You are so good, I am so simple. You are so great, I am only nothing."
That's just an example.
The second act, an act of sorrow for sin.
An example of that would be, "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for all my sins, and I promise
not to sin again."
Or "I'm sorry for all my sins and thoughts, words, actions, and mission, and by the help
of your holy grace, I will never sin again."
And the third act is a petition for light, for the intellect,
so light, supernatural light, and strength for the will.
An example of that would be,
Oh my God, give me your light to see your holy will,
and give me grace to do your holy will.
O wisdom of the sacred heart of Jesus, direct me in all your ways, in all my ways.
O love of the sacred heart, consume me in thy fire.
So we need that light, and once we know what God's will, what he wants of us,
or what he doesn't want us to do, then the strength for the will to do it.
And then recommend yourself by one Hail Mary to the Blessed Virgin, to our Blessed Mother,
to our dear Saint Joseph, your patron saint, and our guardian angel.
A Hail Mary each.
Now we come to the body of the prayer, the second part.
First of all, that can be broken down into three parts.
The body of the prayer, you read a little, you think a little, and you pray a little.
As to reading a little, it should be just a few minutes, because we're talking about
half an hour here of mental prayer, as much as it's necessary in order to pray fervently.
Do not imagine that very much is necessary in order to pray, because we're not reading
to study, we're reading in order to get that spark to set us off into prayer.
So do not wait for a great fire to start burning while you're reading,
but just cherish any little spark, because that's enough
to get the fire going in your mental prayer.
And so that can be compared to kindling sticks and paper.
You put it all in, and now you're reading a little from Scripture,
from a short meditation out of a book.
And St. Alphonsus says, consider the truths, the eternal truths,
death, judgment, hell, heaven, eternity, and the best to think of.
Jesus crucified.
And St. Teresa, a doctor of the church, St. Teresa of Avila, used the book for 17 years.
She was a great mystic, a great contemplative, and yet she still used the ordinary method.
That's what this is.
This is the ordinary way and the most secure and easy way.
Then the next part of this body in the prayer is you're thinking a little.
Again, just a few minutes.
on any thought that has struck you,
that is, think for a short time on what it means,
you've just read, what lessons it teaches you,
and ask yourself these questions.
What have I done about it?
What shall I now do?
And remember, you think only in order that you may pray.
It's not so you can preach a sermon to yourself.
or go out to the poetry no it's in order so you pray and you then it's from your heart just praying
Here, you are slowly adding kindling to the fire in your heart.
And the great benefit of mental prayer consists less in meditation,
so that's not the heart yet, it's all part of the body of the prayer,
but we're getting to it now, or thinking,
so it consists less in meditation and thinking than in acts of the soul,
in prayers and resolutions, which are the fruits of meditation.
you can compare the thinking to a needle.
You've read a little, you're thinking about it, the needle,
and the thread, which draws after it the golden thread,
and the golden thread, the acts of the love of God,
of petition, of prayer, and resolution.
That's the thread, the golden thread.
This golden thread is more important than the needle.
You need the needle, but the golden thread is what will stay there.
And now the heart of the mental prayer should then be spent in making,
all right, so now we're in prayer,
spent in making acts, affections, petitions, and resolutions.
acts of humility, acts of petitions, acts of affection and resolutions, and what are
these examples? Now we pray a little, and how do we do that? We're adding here
that we can be compared to a large logs to the fire. This is the heart of mental
prayer. An example of this could be an act of humility. My God, I am nothing in
your sight.
An act of thanksgiving: My God, I thank you for your goodness.
An act of love: My God, I love you with all my heart.
I wish to please you in all things.
I wish to give you glory.
I only will what you will.
I love you because you are infinitely good.
Do with me in everything I am as it pleases you because it is your holy will.
These acts of love and of contrition that you make here are golden chains binding us to God.
And St. Thomas Aquinas, a doctor of the church, says every act of love merits eternal life.
So make them and make many simple but fervent acts of love and of sorrow.
And the next important part, and this is now absolutely necessary,
that's what this prayer is, the heart of the heart of this mental prayer,
is prayers of petition.
This is the most important part of prayer.
Ah, amen, amen, I say to you, Jesus says,
ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall not.
Seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door will be opened.
Here you add the largest logs to the fire, and in mental prayer it is extremely useful
and perhaps better than everything else to make earnest petitions for the graces you
need and want.
Always ask, above all, as we said last week, for that divine love and perseverance.
And then you could, in a hundred different ways, ask all the other graces you need.
Perfect forgiveness of all past sins, the perfect love of God, the grace of a holy death,
Now, first, this one holy Jesuit, Father Parsonieri, said, "I used to spend most of my time of
prayer in reflecting, thinking, and affections, but God opened my eyes," he said, and he goes
on to say, "and then I gave myself to petitions, and if I have any good in me, it comes from
this practice."
Then to the third part of the heart in mental prayer here we're praying is finding the resolution will be the flame you take from this fire in your mental prayer and place it in the sanctuary of your heart by resolutions.
The progress of a soul, says St. Teresa of Avila, does not consist in thinking much of God, but in loving Him much.
And this love, this union with His will, is gained by resolving to do much for Him.
Make one practical resolution that you mean to keep during the day.
For example, I will engage in battle seven times a day against thoughts of unforgiveness, and I'll keep silence.
Then comes the conclusion of the mental prayer.
Three short, fervent acts which should take less than a minute.
First, thank God for the light you've received in this mental prayer.
Renew your resolution to abstain from some fault or to do some good thing.
Practice in the virtue of silence.
I resolve to save my soul and save my soul as a saint.
I will not give in to slander today.
I will keep joyful and peaceful when contradicted.
And thirdly, ask now God the Father, God the Eternal Father, for the love of Jesus and Mary to help you keep that resolution.
And at the end of mental prayer, always pray for poor sinners, their conversion, and for the souls in purgatory.
And so, note well, the acts I've just described in the heart of mental prayer,
the affections, the prayers of petitions, and the resolutions should occupy most of the time.
Thus, in half an hour's prayer, you give three minutes, basically, to preparation and conclusion.
You think about five minutes.
reflecting, but the rest of the time he's praying.
In general, I will add on mental prayer
what Venerable Pastorette, a Redemptorist,
said, a Holy Redemptorist.
If there is one person I do not love,
I have no love of neighbor.
I do not love God, and God does not love me.
Therefore, forgive everyone from your heart
and make your mental prayer.
In conclusion, my dear faithful,
I encourage you to take up this simple and easy method of mental prayer of St. Alphonsus.
Having this method makes daily mental prayer clear and uncomplicated.
And spend a couple of minutes in the preparation and conclusion.
Read a little.
think a little and when your mental prayer reflections makes moves you to pray then pray a
little this is the heart of mental prayer many who who have found making a meditation to be a
wearisome penance have experienced that with this easy step-by-step method of san alfonsus
the time is all too short and that conversation with god is indeed the greatest joy of life
taste and see how sweet the Lord is.
May our Lady, Mother of Divine Grace,
obtain for us the grace to make daily mental prayer
so necessary for an intimate union with God
and for our eternal salvation.
You will call upon me and I will hear you.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.