Chapter V: Liguorian

To those who only know St. Alphonsus di Liguori – and their number is legion – by what they have heard from those with scarcely more knowledge than themselves, of his reputed laxity in moral theology and his ‘extreme’ mariology, a study of the life, labours and writings of this great and saintly religious and Bishop, with his burning love for Jesus Christ and his consuming zeal for souls, would be a revelation. Few men have crowded even into a long lifetime the work which St. Alphonsus accomplished in the face of incredible difficulties, or left a more striking witness to the spiritual solidity of their life and teaching than such an order as that of the Redemptorists. Unfortunately, a good life of the Saint has yet to be written, but a true estimate of his spirit may be gained from his works and from those of Père Desurmont, mention of which will be found in the bibliography. St. Alphonsus does not give, as St. Ignatius, St. François and others, a detailed method of mental prayer. But it is quite easy to construct one from his teaching, and long use of such a method has proved its peculiar and practical value. I give it first as entirely drawn from the Saint’s works and then in a slightly modified form which has been found useful.

I

I. The Preparation.

Remote

The brief consideration overnight of the questions,

With Whom do I pray? Upon what subject? What particular act?

I go to pray with God, with our Lord, with our Lady or with the Saints – upon this particular subject – specially seeking this virtue which I shall make central in my acts of prayer.

Proximate

(1) An act of Faith.

(2) An act of humble penitence.

(3) A petition for grace to pray well.

II. The Body of the Prayer.

(1) The Consideration. Taking the subject chosen, and keeping in mind the particular act of virtue I desire to make, I recall, by reading or memory, that upon which I wish to dwell. Then, exercising my intellect, I reflect or reason upon it, that I may see it more clearly, become more convinced of its truth. As I do so I must make energetic acts of faith, accompanied with prayer for a firmer faith. ' Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief.' (This is a characteristic Liguorian touch.) I go on to apply this to myself – what is it to me ?

(2) The Act of Virtue. This consists of acts of prayer founded on the different virtues necessary to the Christian life, especially penitence, humility, detachment, confidence, love of God. St. Alphonsus attaches great importance to this part of our prayer, for it is here that the will is moved to love and desire the virtues, and until one does so there will be little exterior practice of them. In this he, in common with other saints, has anticipated what our modern psychologists so often vaunt as new discoveries. The constant repetition of a desire tends to its accomplishment. As Pascal says, ' By talking of love we fall in love ; it is the easiest thing in the world.'

(3) The Prayer of Petition. No writer on mental prayer insists so strongly on the prayer of petition as St. Alphonsus. To him it is almost, if not certainly, the centre of all, since not only are we in absolute need of grace, but God has made His gifts conditional on our desire and search for them. So, in this third part of our prayer, all the energies of the soul must be bent on bringing our necessities before God, in beseeching Him to grant us all graces necessary for our salvation and sanctification. Above all, we must continually ask for love and perseverance.

III. The Resolution, which is to be both general and particular. (See Modified Method.)

II

1. The Preparation. Kneel quietly for a few moments, letting your whole self sink into a state of rest, that you may realise the presence of God. Then make the following acts slowly :

Act of Faith. O my God, I believe that Thou art here present, and I adore Thee from the depths of my own nothingness.

Act of Humility. O my God, I acknowledge that for my sins I deserve to be in Hell. I am sorry that I have offended Thee, because Thou art so good, and I beg, by Thy grace, that I may never sin again.

Petition for Light. O Eternal Father, for the sake of Jesus and Mary, give me light in this prayer that I may make it to Thy glory and the good of my soul.

Paternoster. Ave Maria. Gloria.

Invoke the aid of your guardian angel and patrons.

2. The Meditation. Fix your attention on the subject you have chosen. Make a mental picture of it as clearly as you can, though without effort or strain. As you reflect quietly upon what you see, what it means, and especially to you, you will be moved to make acts of prayer, adoration, praise, thanksgiving, humility, penitence, love, etc. – any acts of prayer, in any words, in any order. Petitions for spiritual gifts may be added. Go on until your time is up, constantly recurring to your picture and renewing your fervour.

3. The Conclusion. Which should be short, intense and business-like. It consists of three acts of resolution and three of prayer.

(1) A general resolution to avoid all sin, mortal and venial, to-day.

(2) To give yourself entirely to God in all things to-day.

(3) A particular resolution to avoid or to do something for our Lord to-day.

Three Acts of Prayer

(1) An act of thanksgiving for the grace received in your prayer.

(2) A fervent petition for grace to keep your resolution.

(3) A Pater and Ave for the Church, for sinners and for the holy souls.

Conclude by kneeling at our Lady's feet, saying the Memorare, and asking her blessing.

The main points of St. Alphonsus's teaching on prayer will throw light on the method here given, and may be summarised as follows :

The principal ends of mental prayer are, first, to unite ourselves to God, ' and that which unites us to God is not so much the good thoughts of our spirit as the good movements of our will or holy affections. Now the affections which are produced in meditation are acts of humility, of confidence, resignation, renouncement, but above all of love and of contrition. . . . But the perfection of love consists in the conformity of our will with the will of God ; . . . thus St. Teresa says (Inter. Castle, M. II., chap. i.), " All that it is necessary to seek in prayer is to conform our will to God's will :

be well persuaded that in this consists the highest perfection – he who most excels in this practice will receive the greatest gifts from God and make most progress in the interior life”’ (Œuvres Ascétiques, Tome III., p. 265, edit. D. P. Dujardin, Paris, 1881). The Saint goes on to say that many seek only themselves in their prayer, their hearts being full of earthly things, and thus they do not find God. Again he quotes St. Teresa (all his writings are a catena of quotations from Holy Scripture, the Fathers and the Saints) : ‘ Detach your heart from all things and seek God ; you will find Him.’ Our prayer can only unite us to God when it is a search for God by a constant detachment and solitude of heart.

Second, to obtain the graces of God necessary to advance us in the way of salvation, St. Alphonsus constantly insists that the principal fruit of meditation is prayer. It is this insistence, indeed, which especially distinguishes his method from others. We do not reflect in meditation in order to reflect or to gain knowledge, but in order to pray. ‘ Meditation is like a needle after which comes a thread of gold, composed of affections, prayers and resolutions’ (Véritable Épouse de J. C., chap. xv. 11). Meditation is necessary, for unless we think about God we shall have nothing to say to God. It is not a study of God, but a looking at Him, which draws our hearts and wills to Him. ‘ So when you have meditated a point, and feel yourself moved by some good thought, raise your heart to God and offer to Him fervent acts of humility, of confidence, of thanksgiving, but above all frequently repeat, in your prayer, acts of contrition and love . . . chains of gold which attach our soul to God.’

Third, to seek, not spiritual sweetnesses in prayer, but to learn what God desires of us. Mental prayer is nothing else but a conversation of the soul with God ; we express our sentiments, desires, fears, petitions :

and God speaks in our heart, making known His goodness, His love, and that which we ought to do in order to please Him.

But we shall not always find consolations in our prayer; more often, the saintly soul suffers from aridity. . . . 'It is in this state that we profit most. Humiliate yourself, then, and resign yourself, seeing yourself without fervour, without desires, and as incapable of making any act of virtue . . . content yourself with saying, "Help me, O Lord! have pity on me, abandon me not." Have recourse to Mary our Mother and Consolatrix. Happy are those who in desolations remain faithful to their prayer! God will fill them with His graces.'

Yet we are not to reject consolations. 'Far from rejecting Divine consolations, as some false mystics maintain we ought to do, let us receive them with gratitude, without, however, stopping to enjoy them, or take complacence in them. . . . These spiritual consolations are gifts far more precious than all the riches and honours of the world' (The Love of Jesus Christ, xv.).

St. Alphonsus thought that most people needed a book of meditations to guide them in the choice of subjects and the arrangement of points, and composed many such books himself, which will be found especially valuable for beginners. At the same time he would not have anything formal in prayer, for 'it is a familiar conversation and an intimate union with God' (Vérit. Épouse de J. C., chap. xv.). 'It is wrong to imagine that to speak to God with a great confidence and familiarity is a lack of respect to His infinite Majesty . . . not only is He not indignant with us when we do so, but He loves us to go to Him with the liberty and tender affection which children show to their mother' (Manière de converser familièrement avec Dieu, chap. i.).

He insists strongly that the preparation to our prayer is most important and that it is very necessary that the act of the presence of God should be one of a living faith (Vérit. Épouse de J. C., chap. xvi. 11). That is, it is not an act of intellectual consideration or, still less, of feeling, but a firm and implicit Credo. God is present; all we have to do is to acknowledge His Presence, placing ourselves deliberately in that Presence by an act of pure faith. The heart of prayer consists in the affections and resolutions awakened in the will by reflection upon Divine truths or mysteries. These may be as diverse as possible, covering the whole of our Godward desires and our needs, but St. Alphonsus especially indicates four acts which should find their place in all our prayer; of confident humility, of contrition, of love and of perseverance. ' I implore the reader not to grow weary of my constant demand that he should ask for love and perseverance. For those two gifts contain all the rest : to obtain them is to obtain all ' (Préparation à la Mort, Préface).

Mental prayer without resolutions would be not only useless but dangerous; they are the true end toward which all our prayer should converge. We ought daily, and for that day alone—since it is easy to do for one day what might seem a hopeless task for a long period, and since our Lord only bids us consider the task and ask for the grace for each day as it comes — to make a fervent general resolution of giving ourselves entirely to God and of avoiding sin: and a particular resolution concerned with the immediate needs of our spiritual life.

Mental prayer is, morally speaking, necessary for all the faithful; it is, then, much more necessary for priests. ' Ah, gentlemen, ' cries St. Alphonsus, preaching to priests and ordinands, ' do not think that mental prayer is an exercise only to be practised by solitaries and not by those occupied in the active life. Tertullian calls all priests Genus deditum orationi et contemplationi. . . .

I repeat it, we must not be content with a quarter or half-hour's prayer, but more, more. Find me an apostolic worker who has been sanctified without much prayer; I have never heard of one.' He will have no excuses. I, says one, cannot meditate; I find nothing in it but desolation, distraction and temptation. The saint replies, You do not go to prayer to find pleasure for yourself, but to seek and to please God. Our Lord is pleased with your good intentions, your perseverance in spite of difficulties, and will abundantly recompense your efforts. To abandon prayer because of lack of consolation, distractions and so on, is to give pleasure to the Devil; it is the one thing he desires. Without mental prayer one can hardly have the priestly spirit.

My time, says another, is devoted to study; I cannot afford to spend it on prayer. But St. Paul writes to St. Timothy, 'Attend to thyself and to doctrine,' that is, apply yourself first to prayer for your own sanctification and then to study for the salvation of your neighbour. Unless we are saintly, how shall we sanctify others? And the science of the Saints, which consists in loving God, is to be found, not in books, but in prayer. I do not deny that study is useful and necessary for priests; but the most necessary study is the Crucifix.

A third says, I should like to pray, but my sermons, the confessional and other activities occupy all my time. St. Alphonsus replies, You are a priest, and I praise you for your work for souls but not for that you forget your own soul. The truth is your work of apostolic activity is useless without prayer; you deceive yourself in so acting, for, noble as such a work is, it is no less dangerous for him who embarks upon it without prayer. If you would draw others to God you must draw near to God yourself. 'One priest of mediocre knowledge but animated by a great zeal will gain more souls for God than any number of learned but luke-warm ones' (Selva ou Dignité et devoirs des prêtres, Instruct. v.).

Man of prayer himself, St. Alphonsus made it the basis of all his reform of the clergy and of a priestly education. Skilled in every branch of theology, and using every care that his clergy should be well instructed, his greatest wish was that their lives should be rooted in that practice of prayer from which alone apostolic labours derive force and fruitfulness. And we, who sometimes dare to criticise him, might better sit at his feet and humbly learn from one who did more for souls in a single week than most of us accomplish in a lifetime.

The consideration of mental prayer according to the Liguorian method would hardly be complete without some reference to the explanations of it given by Père Desurmont, one of the ablest and most faithful modern exponents of the Redemptorist tradition.

He defines mental prayer as ' an application of the faculties of the soul to the things concerning the end of man, under the form of a conversation with heaven' (La Charité sacerdotale, Tome I., p. 402), or as ' nothing else but an interior work of the soul occupied with itself and with God' (Le Retour continuel à Dieu, p. 139). It is founded solely on faith; all prayer should be rooted in a firm belief that ' the person with Whom I would speak is truly present with me, and that my conversation with Him is not a vain imagination but an absolute reality.' Such an act of faith does not seek for vision or feeling of the Divine presence; it is a simple and energetic ' I believe.' The essential conditions of all prayer are that it should be real, a conviction that one is not speaking ' into the air' but to a Person; simple, ' natural as to tone without any desire of emotion, familiar and ordinary' ; and appropriate to one's actual state. It is the actual self which must pray ;

' the greatest of sinners can pray provided only that he prays as a sinner ; the man of evil will can and ought to pray ; but as a man of evil will . . . the lukewarm as lukewarm, the just as a just man ' ; the one essential is that each comes as he is in reality. Two other things facilitate our prayer ; first, the liberty of using vocal prayer during the meditation ; and second, freedom on repeating the same thing over and over again, as does the Church in the liturgy, litanies and the like.

The act of mental prayer has four divisions :

(1) The Meditation or Consideration. ' For we pray in order to gain good thoughts.'

(2) The Act of Virtue, tending toward the renewal of a good will.

(3) The Prayer, in which we seek the grace and blessing of God.

(4) The Resolution, since we pray in order to do more firmly what is right.

The act of meditation, which should not occupy more than a third of the whole time given to prayer, should not consist of long reflections or reasonings, but of a simple and attentive consideration of the subject chosen. The essentials of good meditation are this simple looking at a truth or fact, acts of faith in it, accompanied by prayer for the increase of faith. ' Lord, I believe ; increase my faith.'

The act of virtue which follows is founded in the fact that it is in and by prayer that we become virtuous, for in our prayer we are most capable of good thoughts and desires, receive clearer light upon them, and that we are most in possession of ourselves. Here, then, we should specially make acts of penitence, humility, detachment and love of God, since it is these virtues we most need to regulate our exterior. We should endeavour to make these acts as perfectly as we can, not in intensity, but in quality, as, for instance, that our acts of penitence should be inspired by love rather than by fear. Yet we must realise that we cannot gain virtue by our own effort, but only by the gift of grace, and, as Père Libermann so constantly insists, we must not try to precede grace or want to do things too perfectly, but simply and desiringly place ourselves in our Lord's hands and be led in all things as He wills. And when we perceive the poverty of our acts, how very far they are from being perfect, let us make known to God our sorrow for this, and our desire of making them more perfect according to His will.

The prayer of petition, in which we bring all our needs before God, should also be as perfect as we can make it, and that both as regards the dispositions which accompany it and the things it asks. Humility and confidence, born of a deep sense of our nothingness and unworthiness, and of the mercy of God, fount of all that He does outside Himself, are the two essential dispositions to all prayer. St. Alphonsus, as has been said, attaches the greatest importance to this part of our prayer, in which he would have us beg from God all that we desire for His glory and our own salvation. ' The true prayer [prière] in our meditation (l'oraison),' says Père Desurmont, ' is the continual élan of the soul towards the two principal goods which our Lord has prepared for us and desires us to ask from Him. It is a supernatural and generous sign of the heart towards paradise and towards God.' Nor must we forget the common and particular needs of the Church and of our neighbour.

The resolution is both general and particular; the first is that of continuing and applying our prayer all through the day to the double end of loving God and saving our souls. The second is that of combating our ruling passion, enemy of our perseverance and love for God.

Père Desurmont adds that in preparing for our prayer we should ask and answer three questions : ' With

Whom? With God . . . our Lord . . . Mary . . . the Saints. Upon what subject? What act? Choose ordinarily from amongst those which are fundamental, humility, confidence, knowledge of God and self-penitence, love of God, the will of God, renouncement, imitation of Jesus Christ, etc.'

In times of aridity, multiply vocal prayers, putting into them all the energy possible at the moment. Believe that prayer is always of value, but do not look for sensible results; the best prayers are those which apparently produce nothing. Make much of good desires even if you cannot fulfil them. The Ven. Paul Libermann has a striking note on this subject. 'Divine grace,' he says, 'sometimes directly inspires the soul with a desire without enabling us to carry it out; for at times God gives a desire which he does not will us to execute . . . but simply that we should profit solely by the desire itself, which produces more good to the soul than if, by grace, we should have been able to realise it. . . . We may sometimes ask our Lord to enable us to accomplish that which He has made us desire, but we must be on our guard against endeavouring to do it of ourselves, by force, as it were. It is necessary to feel moved to accomplish a desire in addition to possessing that desire. Desires which are sterile in themselves, in so far that they are not fulfilled, sometimes grow in strength, or at least persevere in intensity, and then they produce great fruit, although they do not develop in act (not by our fault, but because God does not will them to do so). They produce great humility, a great abasement before God, a very great fervour of heart, a perfect abandonment to the Divine will; and in souls in whom God works by love, they operate that languor of love which leads to a great perfection. An evil which often arises is that souls, feeling that impression of desire which grace excites in them, act of themselves in a violent endeavour to accomplish the desire experienced.

They want to go further than our Lord wills; and what is worse, even whilst the Master does not enable them, they will to go on. Ordinarily, the results of this are bad. It arouses self-love, spiritual ambition, presumption, etc.; presently it leads to discouragement, and by and by to contention, trouble, disquietude and and even to scrupulosity. In all cases, such conduct causes the soul to enter a wrong path, exposes it to illusions, and places it under the empire of the imagination and of its own action' (Lettres, Tome III., cclxi.).

Mental prayer, then, according to Père Desurmont, is ' the direction of the soul towards its end,' and by its four primary operations leads to the renewal of the spirit by the consideration of the faith in meditation, the renewal of the heart by the acts of the virtues, the renewal of grace by the prayer of petition, and the renewal of a good will by the resolution. Without ever neglecting the essentials, there must be nothing mathematical, rigid in prayer, but all must be done simply and with ease, more attention being given to this or that act according to the needs and attraits of each soul.

' The glorious liberty of the children of God,' this is the characteristic of the Liguorian prayer. ' Liberty to mingle vocal prayers with meditation; liberty to repeat time upon time what we wish to say to God; liberty of adapting the acts of mental prayer to any method, liberty to follow with discretion the inspiration of the moment or, on the contrary, of keeping to a method once for all determined, as in the words and ceremonies of the Mass; liberty to descend at times, in case of need, to a lower state of prayer, or, with permission, to mount a step higher; liberty to make use of pious books and to appropriate their language; liberty of meditating in an easy position, provided it be reverent and helpful; in one word, liberty to make the work of prayer as easy as may be, provided it be done, and done well' (La Charité sacerdotale, Tome I., p. 421).