Skip to the text
Ember
PT

Mental Prayer — Capuchin Method

Capuchin (Joseph du Tremblay)

20 min

Method

I. The Preparation

Four acts: — of making a right intention; — of profound humiliation; — of recalling to mind the subject chosen; — of withdrawal from distractions.

II. The Meditation

The application of the memory, imagination and intellect to the subject in four acts, by which we seek a knowledge:

— of God, the prototype of the particular perfection manifested in the mystery we are considering;

— of oneself;

— of what our Lord does or suffers in this mystery;

— of the end for which He works or suffers.

In an hour's prayer, about twenty minutes are to be spent on this part.

III. Affections of the Will

Four acts: — of oblation; — of petition; — of imitation; — of union.

The first act of the meditation emphasises the pre-eminence of God, whose perfections and ways should ever be the first object of our worship and our prayer.

About this prayer

A method written for Capuchin novices, and one of the simplest and most attractive there is: twelve acts in three fours. Its mark is that the meditation begins not with ourselves but with God, whose perfection the mystery shows.

History

Fr. Joseph du Tremblay (1577–1638), the Capuchin friar remembered as Richelieu's *Père Joseph*, wrote it to lead his novices toward the higher degrees of prayer. It recalls the Ignatian plan but breathes the Franciscan spirit. An earlier Capuchin, Fra Mattia Bellintani da Salò (1534–1611), had already taught a three-part prayer of preparation, meditation and acts of the will, insisting above all on the *desire* for prayer, which brings us to it and makes it fruitful.

How to pray it

Choose a mystery of our Lord's life. Make the four acts of preparation briefly. Give about a third of the time to the four considerations — God, yourself, what Christ does or suffers, and why — and the rest to the will: offering, asking, resolving to imitate, and uniting yourself to Him.

Fr. Joseph du Tremblay, O.F.M. Cap., *Introduction à la vie spirituelle par une facile méthode d'oraison*; outline after Bede Frost, *The Art of Mental Prayer* (1931)

Found in