Mental Prayer — Olier's Manner of Meditating on the Virtues
Olier — meditating on a virtue
M. Olier describes his method as having Jesus before our eyes, in our hearts and in our hands. He takes as a model an exercise upon the virtue of penitence; any other virtue may be put in its place.
These words… shall be in thy heart… And thou shalt bind them as a sign on thy hand, and they shall be and shall move between thy eyes.
— Deuteronomy 6:6, 8
Having our Lord before our eyes
Consider with reverence Jesus Christ, penitent for our sins. Honour in Him the Holy Spirit of penitence, who animated Him throughout all His life and has filled the hearts of all the penitents of the Church.
Hold yourself in reverence and respect towards so holy and Divine a thing; and after your heart has poured itself out in love, praise and other duties, remain some time in silence before Him, in those same dispositions and religious sentiments rooted in the depth of your soul.
Having our Lord in our heart
After having so reverenced Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit of penitence, we spend some time in seeking that same Spirit for ourselves. We pray that Spirit, to whom alone it belongs to make in us a new heart and to form a spirit of penitence in the soul, to be pleased to descend upon us. We implore Him, by all the inventions of love, to come into our soul in order to conform us to Jesus Christ penitent, continuing in us the penitence which He began in Him.
We give ourselves to Him to be possessed by Him and animated by His virtue; then remain in silence before Him, that we may be interiorly filled with His Divine unction, to the end that we may exercise, on all occasions, such mortification as pleases Him.
Having our Lord in our hands
That is, to will that His Divine will should be accomplished in us who are His members, who ought in all things to be submissive to our Head, and not to have any movement which Jesus Christ, our life and our all, has not given us; who, filling our soul with His Spirit, His virtue and His power, ought to operate in us and by us all that He desires.
He is in pastors, Pastor; in priests, Priest; in religious, Religious; in penitents, Penitent — operating in each the work of their vocation. He ought then to work in us the effects of penitence, and we ought always to be in this spirit, co-operating faithfully with all that He wills to do in and by us.
To pray thus, says M. Olier, is to pray according to our Lord's intention, for these three points correspond exactly with the first three petitions of the Our Father.