20. Is mental prayer easy?
20. Is mental prayer easy?
Yes, mental prayer is easy, whether it be considered on the part of God, or on the part of man.
21. Show that meditation is easy when considered on the part of God.
Since meditation is necessary for everybody, God must make its practice easy, because only easy things can be performed by all men.
22. Show that mental prayer is easy when considered on the part of man.
To make mental prayer means to recall to mind, with the help of grace, some good thoughts, to make in all simplicity acts of faith, hope, and charity, of confidence and humility, of repentance and firm purpose of amendment, of petition, etc. Who would affirm that this is something difficult?
23. Does mental prayer not also offer some difficulties?
Mental prayer does offer some difficulties, as does every work, and every struggle of virtue against vice.
24. Whence come these difficulties?
They come:
1. From the devil, who endeavors to keep us from this holy exercise.
2. From spiritual sloth, which deters us from efforts which must be renewed, as it were, every day.
3. From discouragement, which we experience in finding ourselves always combatting numerous faults and defects, combined with a false persuasion that we cannot correct ourselves of them.
4. From our sins, which pull our mind, heart and will away from God and from prayer. It is not possible to persevere in mental prayer and at the same time to persist in sin, especially not in mortal sin.
25. What then is necessary to make mental prayer well?
It is necessary to have a sincere will, i.e., we must earnestly apply ourselves to mental prayer, and constantly beg this grace of God.
26. By what signs can we know that we make mental prayer well?
The tree is known by its fruits; thus we can know what our meditation is worth by its results.
27. What results does a good meditation produce?
It produces a greater fidelity to the duties of one's state, especially a greater love for humility, the mother of all virtues, for obedience, their guardian, and for charity, their queen.
- taken from Catechism of Mental Prayer, by Father Joseph Simler