Mental Prayer — Ignatian Method

The following questions addressed to the subject-matter will suggest answers which will serve as a guide on the morrow: Who? What? Where? By what aids? Why? How? When? For whom? With what love? With what fruit? Not more than three of these should be used, the main object being to concentrate on the particular fruit you desire to gain from your prayer.

Before going to sleep, fix the mind for a moment on the hour you intend to rise and on the points of your meditation. This must be brief; any prolonged attention is to be avoided as likely to over-excite the intellect or imagination and so prevent sleep. If you wake during the night, quietly recur to your subject, "not giving place to other thoughts."

It is quite a mistake to suppose that a meditation goes better when the subject is new and untouched. It is just the reverse. A repetition is often far more fruitful than the meditation when first made. Old and familiar subjects are better than new ones; and the more thorough the preparation has been, the better the meditation will be.

— Fr. John Morris, S.J., Instructions to Novices

To rise at once, to lift the mind and heart in an act of adoration of God, to dress quietly but briskly, avoiding all slothfulness and fixing the mind on the composition of place, Him whom you shall meet there and the grace you desire, are practices which will go far to ensuring a good prayer. Haste, solicitude, dissipation of mind are always dangerous, and never more so than during those early moments of the day in which its whole tone is set.

"Standing a pace or two before the place where I am to make my contemplation or meditation," for the duration of an Our Father raise the mind to God, before whom you "make a reverence or gesture of self-abasement."

Fr. Roothaan advises making five short, fervent and generous acts here: of faith in the presence of God; of adoration; of contrition; an offering of your memory, understanding and will; and a petition for help —

"Seeing the place" (St. Ignatius); "to go there ourselves" (Fr. Roothaan); "to picture to oneself, and, as it were, to see with the eyes of the imagination the place" (the Directory). It is to no mere historical past that St. Ignatius would have us recur, but to the living present — our Lord "so lately made Man."

Several authors, of whom St. Teresa is one, advise that it is better to make the composition of place interiorly — as taking place within ourselves — rather than transporting the mind to some distant scene, which requires more effort and may lead to overstraining the imagination.

The memory brings forward the subject and, as it were, hands it over to the understanding, which reflects upon it, enters into it, regards it from this side and that, seeking above all the meaning which it has for oneself, the especial lesson contained, the particular demand it makes.

So we come to the exercise of the will which, moved by the understanding, turns to God in acts of the various virtues suggested by the consideration, the particular resolution, and the colloquies. The three powers are not kept distinct from one another, no acts of the will being made until the reflection is concluded. On the contrary, any thought which moves the will should at once be put into prayer, for the whole object of the reflection is to produce this.

The more acts of the will there are interspersed amid the work of the understanding, and the longer and more fervent they are, the better the meditation is being made.

— Fr. John Morris, S.J.

It is not abundance of knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the inward sense and taste of things.

— St. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, Annotation 2

The resolution is of the utmost importance. It must be practical, particular, adapted to your present state, something to be done the same day, and rooted in distrust of yourself together with a great confidence in God.

The object of our meditation is not simply to spend an hour devoutly and meritoriously; our prayer is made that we may purify our souls, that we may clothe them with virtues, that we may amend our lives, that we may strengthen ourselves in our vocation, that we may guard ourselves against temptations, that we may do all our actions perfectly, that we may correspond with the grace of God, and please Him in all things.

— Fr. John Morris, S.J.

A colloquy is properly made by speaking, as a friend speaks to his friend, or as a servant speaks to his master, at one time asking some favour, at another time accusing oneself of some wrong done, at another communicating all one's affairs and asking counsel in them.

— St. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises

I will look and see what success I have had in my contemplation or meditation; and if it has gone badly, I will look into the cause whence the failure proceeds, and so having looked into it I will be sorry, purposing amendment for the future; and if it has gone well, I will return thanks to God.

— St. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises, Fifth Addition

Fr. Roothaan insists strongly on the necessity of the reflection, both that we may learn how to meditate and also profit by meditation. Often when a meditation has been a failure, or apparently so, the reflection supplies the loss.