Showing in Practice How It Is in Our Power Always to Make a Good Meditation and Gather Fruit from It

THE very special and extraordinary prayer of which we spoke above is a very particular gift of God, which He gives not to all, but to whom He pleases; but as for that ordinary and plain mental prayer of which we are treating now, God refuses it to none. Some make the mistake of thinking that, because they cannot attain to that high prayer and contemplation, they cannot pray at all and are not made for it; whereas the other and lower is a very good and profitable prayer and by it we can attain to perfection. Of this, then, we will now speak, since with the grace of the Lord it is in our power always to make it well and draw fruit from it, which is a very consoling fact.

By two ways we may gather this conclusion very well from what has been said. In the first way, because this method of prayer that our Father teaches us is to exercise therein the three powers of our soul, putting with the memory before the eyes of the understanding the point or mystery on which we wish to meditate, and thereupon setting to work with the understanding, reasoning, meditating, and considering those things which will better help to move our will; whereupon must follow our affections and desires of the will; and this last is the principal fruit that we should draw from meditation. Thus meditation does not consist in those sweetnesses and sensible relishes that we sometimes feel and experience, but in the acts that we make with the powers of our soul. Now to make these acts is always in our power, however dry and disconsolate we may be. For though I be drier than a stick and harder than a stone, it is in my power with the favor of the Lord to make an act of abhorrence and grief for my sins, an act of the love of God, an act of patience and an act of humility, an act of desire to be contemned and slighted in imitation of Christ, Who was contemned and slighted for me. We must allow that this affair of making a good meditation and drawing fruit from it does not consist in eliciting these acts with relish and sensible consolation, nor in feeling much what one does; not in this does the goodness and perfection of those acts consist, nor the merit of them. And this is to be noted, because many are much mistaken who are heartbroken, thinking they can make nothing of meditation because they do not feel all the sorrow for their faults and sins or all the aspiration after virtue and desire of it that they could wish. These feelings belong to the sensitive appetite; the will is a spiritual power and independent of that; thus it is not necessary to feel one’s acts in this manner, but it is enough to seek it with the will.

So all divines and saints, dealing with contrition and sorrow for sin, advise penitents who are disconsolate because, taking into account the gravity of mortal sin, they cannot burst out into tears nor feel in themselves that sensible grief that they would have wished, so that their very hearts should have broken with grief. They tell them, true contrition and sorrow for sin is not in the sensitive appetite, but in the will. Be grieved for your having sinned because it is an offense against God, worthy of being loved above all things, for that is true contrition. As for that feeling, when the Lord gives it, receive it gratefully; and when He does not, be not distressed, for it is not that that God asks of us. Clearly He cannot ask of you what is not in our power. Now this feeling that you would like to have is a taste of sensible devotion which is not in our power; and thus God does not ask it of us, but only what is in our power, which is grief of the will, a thing quite independent of that feeling. And the same with acts of love of God; love God with your will above all things, for this is a strong and appreciative love, and what God asks of us; that other is a love of tenderness, which is not in our power. The same with acts of other virtues and all the good purposes that we form.

This truth may be well seen by what is true on a contrary supposition; for it is certain that if a man with his will embraces and consents to a mortal sin, he will certainly sin mortally and go to hell for it, even though he have no feeling nor sensible relish for it whatsoever. Therefore, when a man embraces what is good, though he have no feeling nor sensible relish in the matter, he will please God and merit heaven, especially as God is more ready to reward than to punish. Nay, oftentimes these acts are more meritorious and pleasing to God when they are done in dryness without taste of sensible consolation, because they are purer and stronger and more lasting, and a man puts more of his own into them then than when he is carried off his feet by devotion. Thus it is a sign of a more solid virtue and of a will firmer in the service of God, for whoever makes these acts without these side aids of spiritual delights and consolations, what would he do were such aids at hand to him? Father Master Avila says very well: “The one is carried in arms like a baby; the other walks on his own feet like a grown-up person.” Blosius says that such persons are like men who serve a master at their own cost. It is very important that we should accustom ourselves to make our meditation in this manner, because the more ordinary course of meditation with many is apt to be dryness; these others are extraordinary comforts. As those who voyage on the high seas in galleys do it by force of their arms in rowing, when the wind drops; so those who seek to practise meditation, when the fair wind of lights and consolations from the Lord drops, must contrive to carry on their voyage by the oars of their own faculties, helped by the favor of the Holy Ghost, though it be not so copious and superabundant.

Secondly, we may draw this conclusion in another way. Meditation, as we have said, is not an end, but a means to our spiritual progress and our gaining the victory over our passions and bad inclinations, and so smoothing the way and removing obstacles that we may give ourselves over entirely to God. When the scales fell from the eyes of St. Paul’s soul with that light from heaven and that divine voice, J am Jesus, whom thou persecutest (Acts ix. 5), what a changed man he was, how convinced, how resolved and given over to do the will of God! Lord, he cried, what wouldst thou have me to do? That is the fruit of a good meditation. And we were saying that we must not be content with drawing from meditation general purposes and desires, but we must descend in particular to that of which we have most need, and prepare ourselves and be on the lookout to surmount well the occasions that may present themselves that day, and go our way with all edification.

To apply this to our purpose, by the grace of the Lord this is always in our power; it rests with us always to put a hand to what we have the greatest need of. Put one hand to humility, another to patience, another to obedience, another to mortification and resignation; and take care always to come out of meditation very humbly, very resigned and indifferent, very desirous to mortify yourself and conform yourself in all things to the will of God; and especially always take care to come away from meditation determined that day to live well and with edification, according to your particular condition. So you will have made a very good meditation, and a better one than if you had shed many tears and enjoyed much consolation.

This being so, there is no need for anyone to be distressed at being unable to find many reflections and considerations or feelings of devotion, for meditation does not consist in this, but in the other. Nor again should one make much account of distractions and thoughts that usually give trouble at meditation without our wanting them, a thing that we are apt very commonly to complain of. Try, when you notice this and come back to yourself, to lay hold of what is necessary for you and of the fruit that you have to gather, and hereby supply and make up for the time that has gone over the distraction; so you will have your revenge on the devil, who has made you so distracted with irrelevant thoughts. This is a very profitable direction for meditation. As it is with one who, traveling in company with others, has fallen asleep, and his companions have gone on ahead, when he wakes, he makes ever so much effort to catch them up, and covers as much ground in a quarter of an hour as he would in a whole hour had he not fallen asleep; so you, upon advertence and coming to yourself after the distraction, must manage so well as to do in the last quarter of an hour what you would have done in the whole hour if you had been very attentive. Take account of yourself and say: What was it that I intended to get out of this meditation? What was the fruit that I came prepared to gather from it? Humility? Indifference? Resignation? Conformity to the will of God? Know, then, that I mean to get it all the same out of this meditation, just to plague the devil. And when it seems to you that you have done badly the whole meditation through and gathered none of the fruit that you desired, then at the examination of the meditation, of which we shall speak afterwards, you must do this and thereby make up for the faults that you have committed in the meditation, and so you will always gather fruit from it.