My Prayer Book_LASANCE - the Catholic Kingdom!

132 Mmkd Prayer
may steal upon you with your thoughts fixed on divine
things, and your mind preparing itself to spend the next
day in greater holiness. Always keep in mind that
saying of our heavenly Master: "What shall it profit
a man if he gain the whole world, and sutler the loss of
his soul?" (St, Mark viii. 36.)
75, - mental Praper
"In my nteddation afire shallflame out" (Ps. xxxviii. 4).
m
AKE
at least a short meditation every day. Aienfol
prayer is a more appropriate and comprehensive
term for that spiritual exercise which is so high1 praised
and commended by the saints and so cond;cive to
holiness and perfection.
Mental prayer is within the reach of all who earnestly
desire their salvation. In order to pray with fruit and
without distraction it is most useful and almost necessary
to spend some time in meditutiolt or pious reflection
on some supernatural truth, and from this fact the
whole exercise is often called meditation instead of
mental prayer.
In mental prayer, meditation (the exercise of the
intellect) is only a means to the end, which is the elevation
of the soul to God - conversalwn wiLh God.
\\'hen thinking and reflecting the soul speaks to itself,
reasons with itself; in prayer that follows it speaks to
God. It is plain that mental prayer or meditation is
something more than mere spiritual reading.
But we can easily turn our spiritual reading into a
meditation, as, for ~nstance, when we read only a few
1 Adapted from the Leaflet: Is Mental Prayer Easy ?
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