Of the Conduct to Be Held in Meditation, and the Fruit to Be Gathered from It

MY heart hath grown warm within me, and mn my meditation fire shall be enkindled (Psalm xxxviii. 4). In these words the Prophet David, according to the explanation of many doctors and saints, points out the method we should observe in prayer. They explain this passage of the fire of charity and love of God and our neighbor, which the meditation of heavenly things lit and made to burn in the breast of the Royal Prophet. My heart, he says, gathered heat and was enkindled there within me. This is the effect of prayer. But how did this heat gather? How came it to be kindled there within him? Do you know how? By meditation. And in my meditation this fire shall be enkindled. This is the means and instrument to enkindle this fire. Thus, says St. Cyril of Alexandria, meditation is like the strokes of the steel on the flint to make fire come forth. By the exercise and meditation of the understanding you must strike blows on the hard flint of your heart until the flame bursts forth of love of God and desire of humility and mortification and the other virtues, and you must not stop until you have drawn forth and enkindled in it this fire.

Although meditation is very good and necessary, yet all our prayer must not be let go in reasonings and considerations of the understanding, nor must we stop there, for that would be rather a study than a prayer; but all the meditations and considerations that we make, we must take as means to awaken and kindle in our heart affections and desires of virtue. For the goodness and holiness of Christian and religious life does not consist in good thoughts and understanding of holy things, but in solid and true virtues and especially in the acts and operations thereof; such activity being, according to St. Thomas, the last perfection of virtue. Thus it is on this that we should principally dwell and occupy ourselves at prayer. This we must take for a first principle in this matter. Even the philosopher there in heathendom said it, and Gerson quotes him: “We go inquiring and investigating what manner of thing virtue is, not for the knowledge, but to be good and virtuous men.” Though a needle is necessary to sew, yet it is not the needle that sews, but the thread; he would be very silly who spent the whole day in putting in and drawing out a needle without thread, for that would be labor in vain; yet that is what they do whose prayer is all understanding and meditating, with little of loving. Meditation should be as the needle, which goes in first, but only goes in that through it there may go in the thread of love and affection of the will, wherewith we are to unite and conjoin ourselves to God.

Our Father warns us of this point much in particular and repeats it to us many times in the book of the Spiritual Exercises. After having set down the points which we are to meditate, with some brief reflections, he says at once: “And refer all this to myself to draw some fruit.” In this lies the fruit of prayer—in each one’s knowing how to apply to himself and to his own improvement what he meditates, according to his wants. The glorious Bernard says well: As the sun does not warm all to whom it gives light, so knowledge and meditation, though it teaches us what we have to do, does not move and stir the wills of all to do what it teaches. It is one thing to have knowledge of great wealth, and another thing to possess it; so he says it is one thing to know God, and another thing to fear and love God: it is not the knowing many things of God that makes us truly wise and rich, but the fearing and loving of God. He brings in also another good comparison to this effect. Asa hungry man would benefit little by having set before him a table plentifully laid with exquisite dishes if he did not eat them, so it will little profit him who practises prayer to have before him a rich and splendid board of many excellent considerations if he does not eat thereof, applying them to himself by his will so as to make profit out of them.

Descending herein more into particulars, I say that what we ought to draw from meditation and prayer should be holy affections and desires, formed first interiorly in the heart, that afterwards in due time they may come out in action. The blessed St. Ambrose says that the end of meditation is action. Of those holy and mysterious living creatures whom the Prophet Ezechiel saw, he says, among other particulars, that they had wings and under the wings the hands of a man, to give us to understand that the flight and play of the understanding should be subservient to action. We ought, then, to draw from prayer affections and desires of humility, disparaging ourselves and desiring to be disparaged by others—desires of suffering pains and labors for the love of God, and rejoicing in those that at present fall to our lot—affections of poverty of spirit, desiring that the worst of the house be for us and that something may be wanting to us even of necessaries—grief and contrition for our sins, and firm purposes rather to fall asunder than to sin—thanksgiving for favors received —true resignation into the hands of God—and finally, desire to imitate Christ our Redeemer and Master in all the virtues that shine forth in Him. To this our meditation should be directed and ordained, and this is the fruit that we should draw from it.

Hence it follows that, since meditation and the exercise of the understanding are taken up as a means to move the will to these affections, and this is the end and purpose of the whole business, we ought to use meditation and the exercise of the understanding so far as is necessary to this end and no further, since the means should be proportionate and commensurate with the end. Thus, when we feel our will excited and moved to desire of some virtue, as to sorrow for sin, contempt of the world, love of God, desire of suffering for His sake, or the like, we should at once cut short the thread of the activity of the understanding— even as a mason removes the wooden scaffolding of arches and bridges when the masonry is set—and stop and dwell on this affection of the will till we are satisfied and have drunk it well into our soul. This is a very important direction, and our Father puts it in the book of Exercises, where he says that on the point whereon we find the devotion and feeling that we desire, we should there stop and occupy ourselves upon it, without anxiety to pass to anything else until we are quite satisfied. As a gardener watering a seed plot, when the water begins to work its way into the earth, stops the flow of the stream and lets the water thoroughly soak and be drunk in by the bowels of the dry earth, and passes not on till it is well soaked and irrigated; so when the water of good affections and desires begins to enter into our soul, which is as earth without water, as the prophet says: My soul, O Lord, is as earth without water before thee (Psalm cxlii. 6), we should stop the flow of reasoning of the understanding and enjoy this irrigation and affection of the will as long as we can, until the whole heart is saturated and soaked and we can rest satisfied.

The blessed St. Chrysostom brings another comparison pat to our purpose. Have you not seen, he says, when a lambkin goes to suck the breasts of its mother, it does nothing but turn now here now there, and now sucks at the teat and then at once quits; but when the milk begins to flow, it immediately holds fast and quietly enjoys it? So in prayer, before the dew descends from heaven, man goes discoursing and reasoning from one point to another; but when the heavenly dew comes, we must at once stop and taste that sweetness and delight.