Introduction

THE purpose of this book is clear, definite and restricted. It is to give to the clergy, religious and devout laity who, for one reason or another, are unable to go to the sources themselves, a concise and as brief a treatment as the subject allows of the interior life of prayer in its early stages as it has been taught and practised by the great masters of the spiritual life. It covers all that need be known, apart from that actual personal experience which each one may gain only for himself and without which little can be done in guiding others in the paths of prayer. If it is asked why I begin with the early sixteenth century, with St. Ignatius, St. François, St. Teresa and St. Pedro de Alcantara rather than with Cassian, St Nilus or even with the Victorines, it is simply because it was then that the practice of mental prayer, which had ever been regarded as an essential to the normal Christian life, became an exact science, an art, was 'codified' and enclosed within 'methods' such as this volume deals with. That this was, as Dom Chapman says, 'an entire reversal of tradition' (article on 'Mysticism' in the Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ix., p. 100), I am not concerned to deny. In chapter iii. I endeavour to show that such a 'reversal,' or, as I should prefer to call it, a 'development,' was as desirable and necessary then as it is to-day. Yet it must not be inferred that methodic mental prayer was an entirely new thing in the sixteenth century. In the Scala claustralium of Dom Guigues of Chartreuse (1083-1137) we find that fourfold act of prayer which was to be developed in succeeding ages. The four degrees of prayer, says Dom Guigues, are reading, meditation, prayer and contemplation. 'Reading is an attentive study made by applying the mind to Holy Scripture. Meditation is a careful investigation, by the aid of the reason, of a hidden truth. Prayer is the elevation of the heart towards God in order to avoid evil and obtain good. Contemplation is the raising of the soul in God, ravished in the taste of eternal joys. . . . The ineffable sweetness of the blessed life is sought in reading, found in meditation, asked for in prayer, tasted in contemplation.' The rest of the book consists of an explanation of this manner of prayer. Dom Guigues du Pont (d. 1297), in an important treatise De Contemplatione, the first part of which was reproduced in the Prœmium to the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony, and through him became known to St. Ignatius, describes the three ways of spiritual life, purgative, illuminative or union with Christ, and contemplative. In the first two, Christ is the centre of the soul's effort, which, being healed by the Divine medicine in the purgative way, seeks to be united to, to adhere to Christ. The means of this is meditation on the life of our Lord, which must be practised in order, one mystery being considered each day, and this, not as if we were considering some past or far-off fact, but as if we were actually taking part in it. By contemplation, Dom Guigues means what later writers style 'acquired contemplation,' that prayer to which meditation is the way and which may be attained by our own efforts aided by grace. Such contemplation, he says, contains three elements, prayer (oratio), appropriate matter (materia), and a method (modus exercitandi). He divides this contemplation into speculative and anagogical, the first of which is akin to later meditation, being largely an intellectual exercise requiring the three conditions of purity of heart, spiritual solicitude and piety which desires to taste and feel (sentire) the Lord 'in goodness and simplicity of heart.' Anagogical contemplation, which is more like our 'affective' prayer, at least in its first two degrees, has three steps, or 'adhesions.' In the first we attach ourselves by love to the Sacred Humanity, daily meditating or contemplating the mysteries of the human life of Christ, gradually passing to the contemplation of His Divinity. In both these degrees the subject should be prepared in order that we may have matter to occupy our mind and stir our devotion. In the third degree, we pass beyond all consideration, being immediately and directly united to God 'immediate se submittere divinæ bonitati ad recipiendum anagogicas benedictiones accensiones et ascensiones.'

In the De triplici Via or Incendium Amoris of St. Bonaventura, one of the most noteworthy treatises of his age, we find attached to each way its own kind of spiritual exercise, meditation, prayer, contemplation. Of the first, the Saint writes, 'In meditation of this kind, our soul should employ itself entirely with all its faculties, reason, synderesis, conscience, will. The reason considers that which it is doing, the understanding judges and defines the case supposed, the conscience bears its witness and suggests the conclusion, the will chooses and decides. Do you wish so to meditate in the purgative way? The reason will then search that which a man must do who has violated the temple of God; the judgment replies that he ought to be condemned or to repent; the conscience cries, "This man, it is thou, then, damnation or penitence"; then the will makes its choice, rejects condemnation and freely decides with tears to repent.' St. Ignatius is hardly more definite as to the need, use and manner of mental prayer. Later authors continue the tradition which in the sixteenth century was clarified, codified and made popular.¹

I should like to emphasise one point which will be dealt with more fully later on. Most people do not know either the need of mental prayer or the way to practise it, and need to be taught: those who do practise it are frequently hampered by the fact that only one method is in any sense generally known, and that a method not suited to or meant for the majority. There are many other methods, but most of them are inaccessible to the ordinary reader; and even those which are available, e.g. that of St. Pedro of Alcantara, entitled A Golden Treatise of Mental Prayer, of which an admirable edition is now to be had in the "Orchard Books" series, published by Messrs. Burns, Oates & Washbourne, are much less used than they deserve.

I have, therefore, endeavoured to supply what seems to be a need by gathering in one volume all the chief methods taught by those whom the Church has either canonised or regards as pre-eminent in the spiritual life, adding only certain chapters, themselves no more than a résumé of the teaching of the Saints, which seemed necessary to complete the book and make it, if not a complete, yet a sufficient guide to the subject. Those who wish to read further in the matter will find abundant material in the Bibliography, scanty as it is compared with the vast store from which it is gleaned. I have quoted largely, not only because the exact words of spiritual authors are of more value than any others, but also that my readers may be led to desire to know more of the great classics of the spiritual life.

BEDE FROST.

Christmass, 1930.

Footnotes

1. For a full study of the history of methods of mental prayer see P. Watrigant, 'Histoire de la meditation methodique,' Revue d' Ascetique et Mystique, April 1922, January 1923. P. Pourrat gives a brief account in vol. iii., pp. 6-22, of his Christian Spirituality. ↩