5.2.II. What Mental Prayer Ought to Be

Ascensio mentis in Deum.
The ascent of the mind to God.

“To ascend thus,” says St. Thomas, “since it is an act not of the speculative but of the practical reason, implies acts of the will.”

Consequently:
Mental prayer is real hard work, especially for beginners. Work to get detached, for a few minutes, from all that is not God. Work to remain for half an hour fixed in God, and to gather yourself for a new effort to reach perfection. This work is no doubt hard, in the beginning, but I am going to accept it with generosity. Besides this work will be quickly rewarded by great consolations here on earth, by peace in friendship, and union with Jesus.

“Mental prayer,” says St. Theresa, “is nothing but a friendly conversation in which the soul speaks, heart-to-heart, with the One Who we know loves us.”

A loving conversation. It would be blasphemous to imagine that God, Who makes me feel the need and at times the attraction of this converse, and, what is more, makes it an obligation for me, should not want to make it easy for me. Even if I have long neglected it, Jesus calls me tenderly to mental prayer, and offers me special help in speaking this language of faith, hope, and love, which, as Bossuet says, is precisely what my mental prayer ought to be.

Am I going to resist this appeal of a Father Who calls even the prodigal to come and listen to His word, to talk to Him as a son; to open his heart to Him and to listen to the beatings of His own?

A simple conversation. I will be myself. I will speak to God of my tepidity, or my sins. I will speak to Him as a prodigal, or from the heat of my fervor. With the simplicity of a child, I will put my state of soul before Him, and I will only use words that express what I really am.

A practical conversation. When the smith plunges the iron into the fire, he is not just trying to make it hot and glowing; he wants to make it malleable. So too, the only reason why mental prayer is to give light to my mind and warmth to my heart is to make my soul pliant so that it can be hammered into a new shape, so that the faults and form of the old man may be hammered out, and the form and virtues of Jesus Christ imparted to it.

Thus the result of my conversation will be to elevate my soul to the level of the sanctity of Christ,

A definition, by Alvarez de Paz, of the object of mental prayer.

so that He may be able to fashion it in His own likeness. “Thou, Lord Jesus, Thou Thyself, with Thine own most gentle and most merciful, yet most powerful hand, dost FORM and MOULD my heart.”
Tu, Domine Jesu, Tu Ipse, Manu mitissima, misericordissima, sed tamen fortissima, formans ac pertractans cor meum (St. Augustine).