5.2.I. Fidelity to Mental Prayer

Resolution on Mental Prayer

Each of these resolutions is to be slowly meditated, or rather divided up into several meditations. Merely reading through them will not be of much benefit.

I firmly resolve to practice mental prayer every morning.

Is this fidelity to mental prayer absolutely necessary?

I am a priest; I heard, on my ordination retreat, the grave words: Sacerdos alter Christus. I then understood that if I do not make Christ in a special manner the source of all my life, I will not be a priest according to His Heart, I will not be a priestly soul. As a priest I must live in intimacy with Christ. That is what He expects of me. “I will not now call you servants . . . but I have called you friends.”
Jam non dicam vos servos, vos autem dixi amicos (Joan. 15:15).

But my life with Christ—Principle, Means, and End—will develop in proportion as He is the light of my reason and of all my interior and exterior acts, the love that regulates all the affections of my heart, my strength in time of trial, in my struggles, in my work, and the food of that supernatural life which makes me share even in the life of God.

Fidelity to mental prayer will guarantee this life with Christ. Without mental prayer it is morally impossible.

Shall I dare to insult, by my refusal, the Heart of Him who offers me the means to live in friendship with Him?

Another important, though negative, aspect of the necessity for mental prayer: in the economy of the divine plan, it is a sure defense against the dangers inherent in my weakness, in my relations with the world, and in certain of my duties.

If I practice mental prayer, I am clad, as it were, in steel armor and am invulnerable to the shafts of the enemy. Without mental prayer, I will certainly be wounded. Hence, there will be many faults which I will hardly notice, if at all, and yet they will be imputed to me as their cause.

“A priest in constant contact with the world faces the choice between mental prayer or a very great risk of damnation,” said the pious and learned and prudent Fr. Desurmont, without any hesitation: and he was one of the most experienced preachers of ecclesiastical retreats.

Cardinal Lavigerie, in his turn, said: “For an apostle, there is no halfway between sanctity, if not acquired, at least desired and pursued (especially by means of daily mental prayer), and gradual corruption.”

Every priest can apply to his meditation the words with which the Holy Cross inspired the Psalmist: “Unless THY LAW had been my meditation I had then perhaps perished in my abjection.”
Nisi quod lex tua meditatio mea est, tunc forte periisem in humilitate mea (Ps. 118:92).

Now this law goes so far as to oblige the priest to reproduce the spirit of Our Lord.
A Priest Is as Good as His Mental Prayer

Two Classes of Priests

1. Priests whose resolve is so firm that they will not even allow their mental prayer to be delayed by pretexts of social niceties, business, and so on. Only a very rare case, of absolute impossibility, will make them postpone it until some other half-hour, later in the morning. Nothing more.

These true priests set their hearts on getting definite results in their mental prayer, which they insist on keeping distinct from their thanksgiving after Mass, from all spiritual reading, and, a fortiori, from the composition of a sermon.

They possess sanctity, by virtue of their efficacious desire for it. As long as they persevere in this course, their salvation is morally certain.

2. Priests who make nothing but a half-hearted resolution and who put off, and so easily omit, their mental prayer altogether, distort its object, or make no real effort to succeed in it.

What can they look forward to? Inevitable tepidity, subtle illusions, a drugged or distorted conscience—and these are steps on the slippery path to hell.

To which of these two classes do I want to belong? If I hesitate to make my choice, my retreat has been a failure.

All these things go together. If I give up my halfhour of mental prayer, even Holy Mass—and therefore my Communion—will soon give me no personal profit and may even be imputed to me as a sin. The laborious and almost mechanical recitation of my Breviary will no longer be the warm and joyous expression of my liturgical life. No vigilance, no recollection, and hence, no ejaculatory prayers. Alas! No more spiritual reading. My apostolate will be less and less fruitful. No frank and sincere examination of faults—still less any particular examen. Confession—a matter of routine, and sometimes of questionable worth. . . . The next step will be sacrilege!

The citadel, less and less well defended, lies open to the assault of a legion enemies. The walls are full of holes . . . soon the whole place will be in ruins.