We have divided Mental Prayer into three parts, namely: the preparation, the body of the Prayer, and the conclusion. The Conclusion embraces the Petition for Help, the Act of Thanksgiving, and the Act of Oblation.We have divided Mental Prayer into three parts, namely: the preparation, the body of the Prayer, and the conclusion. The Conclusion embraces the Petition for Help, the Act of Thanksgiving, and the Act of Oblation.
The Petition for Help
“Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.” – Matthew 7:7
Our resolutions could never be put into practice without the assistance of the grace of God, by reason above all of our own extreme weakness. It is necessary that we should have recourse to God, Who will give us strength to do well after having given us the strength to wish to correct ourselves.
We should present out Petition to God in the same way as was explained with regard to the third point of the preparation. We should, as far as possible, stir up our confidence, praying the Eternal Father that, in the Name of Jesus Christ His Son, He will be good enough to grant us what we desire with so much ardour and affection, and that He will fulfill in us the infallible words of Jesus Christ, Who said: “If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you” (John 16:23). Then, addressing Jesus Christ, we should beg of Him with importunity the grace wholly to accomplish what we have resolved upon in the Prayer, through the merits of His holy Mother and of His faithful servant, Saint Dominic; and also with the help of our holy Guardian Angel whom we may invoke to come to our assistance to remind us at opportune moments of our resolutions. We must then arm ourselves with courage, hoping firmly that we shall be heard. This confidence will fill our heart with joy, and make us carry out with greater promptitude and more fervour our holy resolutions.
We will not give an example of the Petition for Help, but each one will be able to make it following the directions we have given.
The Act of Thanksgiving
“Giving thanks to God the Father, Who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the Saints.” – Colossian 1:12
The Act of Thanksgiving is very easy. There is nothing else to be done than to bless and thank God and the Saints who have aided us during the Prayer according as we asked them at the beginning. We should represent God to ourselves as accompanied by the whole heavenly court; we should humble ourselves before the Divine Majesty, adoring, blessing, and thanking Him from the bottom of our heart; or, in form of colloquy, saying to Him: My God, I glorify Thy infinite Goodness for ever, Thou Who hast deigned to communicate with my soul in this Prayer, making me share in divine graces, heavenly lights, and loving caresses. I bless Thee and thank Thee again, that, having admitted me among the number ol Thy little servants, Thou hast made me sit at the table of Thy dear children, and given me the Bread of Angels. I also thank Thy holy Mother, and all my patron Saints who have helped me to receive from Thy generous Hands this signal blessing of having been able to make my Prayer.
The Act of Oblation
“Bring to the Lord, O ye children of God…bring to the Lord glory and honour…adore ye the Lord in his holy court.” – Psalm 28:1-2
We must, in the last place, offer to God all the good which, with the help of His holy grace, we have done in our Prayer; we ought at the same time humbly to demand His pardon for all the negligences which we have com- mitted, and also for the slothfulness which we have displayed therein and which might have caused the withdrawal of graces that His Divine Heart had destined for us. Further, we must offer to God our soul, our body, our thoughts, our desires, our affections, our words and our actions, in order that all that is in us may be perfectly and totally directed to the glory of His Divine Majesty.
But as all this which belongs to us is very little in the sight of God, we should present to Him the merits of His dearly-beloved Son, the graces, mercies, privileges of His most holy Mother, the works and services of all the Saints, recommending to Him also all the duties with which we are charged, and especially Holy Church, the Sovereign Pontiff, Christian Princes, our holy Order, superiors and subjects, our parents and friends, the souls in Purgatory, and all those for whom we have promised to pray.
Final Conclusion and Useful Advice
For the Final Conclusion, we should bow down before God from the inmost depths of the heart, demanding with great humility His holy benediction. We should then retire within ourselves and recall the thoughts, desires, and feelings, which most deeply moved us, as well as all the graces which we received in the Prayer; and we should make of them a spiritual bouquet, the sweet fragrance of which, for our sanctification, we can inhale for the rest of the day. We should especially often recall our good resolutions, in order to practise them and to avoid appearing before God as untruthful, and that He may not reproach us, to our great confusion, with having made fine promises and failed to keep a single one of them.
To finish with, we shall give some advice.
1. If there be souls extraordinarily favoured by God, who, without effort of mind, without trouble or work or any special direction, find themselves at once touched by the Holy Spirit, make their Mental Prayer fruitfully, with liberty of heart, according as God enlightens and guides them, without troubling about these ordinary practices, then there is no need for them to stop at the injunctions which we have given. Nevertheless, as this extraordinary gift of Prayer is rare, being met with only in very few persons; and as, further, those who pretend to have acquired it or would like to aspire to it, may be accused of presumption and pride, we beg all devout souls, speaking generally, who practise Mental Prayer, to follow the instructions which we have given, in order that they may advance with more humility and more security in the way of perfection.
2. Great care is necessary to see that there is fervour in all the parts of our meditation, from start to finish, so that it may be much more profitable. Especially is this so with regard to the Consideration; as we have already said, thoughts and subjects should be chosen which are calculated to move us more deeply. By this means we shall fix our attention the more firmly, and reap incomparably greater fruit from the Prayer.
3. With regard to the method of putting ourselves in the Presence of God – say, attentively weighing each word: “Behold me now before my God,” or, “God sees me, is now looking at me.” If these words, albeit said with serious reflection, do not produce in our understanding the same effect as these put in the form of colloquy: “O Sovereign God, Whose Majesty is incomprehensible, I firmly believe that Thy Divine Looks penetrate to the very bottom of my heart, and that they never cease to regard Thy poor and miserable creature, often as it is that I do not think of Thee,” then this second formula should be used and the first abandoned. But if the particular disposition we are in makes the first method of putting ourselves in the Presence of God more satisfactory, we ought to employ it and not the second. Similarly, with regard to the Consideration; if we find ourselves more moved by saying: “My Lord, how exceeding great did Thy Obedience appear when Thou didst deign to submit to death and to the death of the Cross,” we ought to use this means of fixing our thoughts, rather than saying simply: “Jesus Christ is made obedient unto death.” Finally, if in the Resolutions, it is more to our taste to say: “My Lord, for love of Thee, I wish to obey, and I promise Thee to do so with my whole heart,” we ought to phrase it in that way, and not simply: “Henceforth, I must obey.” If we cannot from the beginning make our Prayer in this affectionate manner, we should, at least, forcibly apply ourselves to it in certain acts which belong to it more especially, as in the Affections, Resolutions, Petition for Help, and in the Acts of Thanksgiving and Oblation, in order that our Prayers may not be deprived of their most essential quality, which is that of being a continual colloquy between the soul and God, an efficacious and fervent petition to the Divine Majesty for all that pertains to His glory and our salvation.
4. We will give another piece of advice to all who devote themselves to Prayer. It is to offer to the Eternal Father, towards the end of this holy exercise, the Humanity of our Saviour Jesus Christ streaming with blood, saying three Paters and Aves in memory of the three hours during which He suffered in most bitter agony on the Cross, and in honour of the cruel torments He suffered in His Passion until His last breath, in order to obtain from God, through the merits of the Cross and Passion, all the graces we have asked for during our meditation. This offering will always be most acceptable to God, and most efficacious for obtaining precious heavenly gifts, and in particular the grace of suffering and dying in union with His Passion and Death. This is why we ought to pause chiefly on the most acute and painful sufferings which Jesus Christ endured for us during those three hours; it was then that Divine Justice obtained all that it could demand to be fully satisfied, receiving as the price of our Redemption the union of those prodigiously cruel interior and exterior torments, which made the Evangelists say that it was an excess of grief and of love.
- text taken from A Short Method of Mental Prayer, by Father Niccolò Ridolfi, O.P., 1920