“I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord…is my refuge…my God.” – Psalm 17:1,2“I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord…is my refuge…my God.” – Psalm 17:1,2
After the Consideration one must turn to the Affections. The property of the understanding is to enlighten the will and to make known to it the good which it should love and do, and the evil which it should hate and avoid. As soon as this operation of the understanding is achieved, the will ought to perform its operation, stirring itself up to the love of the good which it has learned, and to a horror of the evil which it has seen: in Mental Prayer, then, the Acts of Affection which follow the Consideration have no other object than to touch the will.
Divine charity is the end of Meditation, giving it its truly supernatural character and rendering it holy and sanctifying; meditation without devout Acts of Affection is barren and without merit . All the fruit of the Prayer, then, depends upon the acts of the will. This is why we should labour as much as we possibly can to derive holy Affections and efficacious desires from all our Considerations.
See, then, how one should seek to produce these Acts of Affection. If the subject matter concerns what is good, we should stir ourselves up to love it – for example, if we are meditating on paradise, our will should set itself to desire it. If the subject matter concerns what is bad, and what can cause us evil, our will should apply itself to take the means to flee from it and avoid it – for example, when we meditate on hell, we should picture it to ourselves as so terrible that every effort ought to be made not to merit it. If we take for the subject of our meditation some virtue, we should consider its advantages in order to stimulate ourselves to acquire it. If, on the contrary, we represent to ourselves the sad results of some vice, we should form such an idea of it as would fill us with horror at it and make us avoid it in all our actions.
We can derive from the same subject many different movements of the will. For example, if the soul wishes to reflect upon Our Most Sweet Jesus dying on the Cross for us, it can give way to different Affections: such as love, in order to return love for love; or fear, for if the Innocent One is treated with so much severity, how will a soul, that is guilty and laden with sins, be able to escape the hands of Divine Justice? or hope, believing most firmly that God will deal favourably with it, and that He will not refuse the help necessary to save it, since He so lovingly sacrifices His Precious Blood and even His Life for it upon the Cross; or sorrow for sins, seeing that they have been the cause of the sufferings and cruel death of Jesus Christ; or spiritual joy, the salvation of the world being the happy result of the Sacrifice of the Cross.
Sometimes, we may derive but one Affection from our Consideration. For example, when we meditate upon the excellence of chastity, we excite ourselves to love it and to take the means to practise it and to acquire it in a perfect degree with regard to both the body and soul. This Act of Affection ought always to be accompanied by serious self-reflection, our personal dispositions being considered with regard to the subject upon which we are meditating, so that we may see whether we have the virtue which the Consideration makes us love and desire, whether we are exempt from the vice of which we have just seen the hideousness and evil. To this reflection it is necessary to add another to see whether we are making progress in the virtue on which we are meditating, whether we are really detached from the vice which we detest, whether there remain in us some repugnance to perfection, whether there be not some evil vestige of our bad habits – in a word, we have to see whether we are advancing, or whether we are going back in the practice of this virtue. And because this reflection is of great help to us, in the way of perfection, it is often necessary in this part of the Prayer to represent to ourselves some virtue, now one, now another, according as the Holy Spirit suggests, in conformity with the subject of our meditation, and to see whether we have this virtue in deed rather than in word, or with what earnestness we are striving to acquire it.
Again, we can put before our eyes some imperfection which is detrimental to us, seeing how far we grovel under its tyranny through our own fault, or the little care we take to destroy it; how easily and how often we give way to it, and the negligence we have shown in avoiding it.
An Example of the Acts of Affection
“I am become as a beast before Thee, and I am always with Thee.” – Psalm 72:23
What shall I say of myself, my Lord and my God, if not this – that, although of the number of Thy rational creatures, I see myself to be through my own fault in a state far lower than that of the beasts and insensible creatures! What confusion for me, to behold myself so reduced that such a lesson can effectively be given me! Nevertheless, my God, it is so, since a beast allows itself to be led by its master wherever he wills, whereas I, miserable that I am, am unwilling to obey Thy commandments. Henceforth, then, I no longer wish to follow either the inclination of my senses, or the reasoning of my own judgment, but I wish to allow myself to be guided entirely by Thee, so that I may say with the royal Prophet: “I am become as a beast before Thee: and I am always with Thee.”
If the sun, the heavens, the stars, and all the elements execute Thy orders with such exactitude, is it not most reasonable, O my God, that I should entirely abandon my will in order to accomplish Thy adorable will, out of regard for the love which I owe Thee? What would become of the universe if creatures were left to themselves? Everything would return to its first chaos, and there would be nothing but horrible and frightful confusion.
How often am I a burden to the holy Order to which Thy divine grace has called me, in not being willing to submit my judgment and my will to the judgment and commands of my Superiors, who hold here the place of Thy adorable Majesty and give me orders in Thy Name!
Do not deceive thyself, O my soul, but examine thyself seriously and see the number of years thou hast spent in doing thy own will without following blindly that of thy Superiors, avoiding the obedience which thou hast vowed so definitely. How many times has obedience spoken, and thou hast resisted! Blush, then, with shame and confusion, since thy conscience finds thee guilty on this point.
Consider the most perfect obedience of Jesus Christ, and thou wilt have good reason to cry out with confusion: O wretched creature, outcast of the earth, arrogant and proud soul, how darest thou follow thy own judgment and thy own will? God was willing to obey a man, and thou, wretch that thou art, art not willing to obey God Who speaks to thee by a man. Jesus Christ died on the Cross out of obedience, and thou, ill-advised as thou art, art not willing to do anything else in religious life except thy own will. Unhappy creature, wilt thou always be subject to this misery?
- text taken from A Short Method of Mental Prayer, by Father Niccolò Ridolfi, O.P., 1920