8th Monday after Pentecost

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow upon the exercise of meditation, as being after our rising, on which we meditated last Saturday, the first act of the day, and we shall see: 1st, its excellence; 2d, the preparation we must make for it. Our resolution shall then be: 1st, never to fail to make our meditation, and, in order to do so, to make it immediately after our rising, because a meditation which is delayed is often a meditation which is left undone; 2d, to prepare ourselves for it by an habitual life of recollection, and especially by the practice of laying down the subject of our meditation the evening before. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of David: “Unless Thy law had been my meditation, I had then perhaps perished in my abjection” (Ps. cxviii. 92).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect adorer of His Father, rendering to Him His homage in prayer and finding His delight in this holy exercise. Let us admire the zeal with which He applies Himself to it. He begins His prayer when beginning to live; He perseveres in it all His life long; He perseveres in it even after His death, upon our altars, without speaking of the continual prayer He makes in heaven. What homage ought we not to render to Him from this point of view!

FIRST POINT

The Excellence of Meditation

Prayer is everything, in a word, which is sublime in religion; it is an elevation of our mind and our heart towards heaven (St. John Damascene); it is intimate intercourse with God (St. Gregory Nazianzen); it is the union of the soul with its Supreme Good (St. Ephrem); it is the occupation of the angels in paradise permitted to men upon earth; it is the life of heaven begun here below. By prayer we raise ourselves above all that passes away, and we leave it beneath our feet; by it, understanding that God alone is all, we throw ourselves upon Him, we cast our hearts into His, that we may love and serve only Him and live only for Him. What can be more sublime and, at the same time, more necessary? “Unless Thy law had been my meditation,” says David, “I had then perhaps perished in my abjection. Thy justifications I will never forget, for by them Thou hast given me life” (Ps. cxviii. 92, 93). It is because in fact meditation alone is able to keep up in the soul that lively faith in the great truths of religion, of the importance of salvation, of the sanctity of our mysteries, of the extent and of the details of our duties, without which salvation is impossible; it alone can prevent the routine, the relaxation, the successive cessation of all the conservative practices of piety, and put away the illusions in which we are so apt to indulge in regard to the state of our conscience; it alone can form and preserve in the soul the spirit of humility, of mortification, of meekness, of all the virtues necessary to salvation, and it was this which made St. Bonaventura say: “Without prayer there is no progress in virtue;” and the pious Gerson: “Without the exercise of meditation no one, except it be by a miracle, has ever attained perfection.” Meditation is also infinitely advantageous on account of the virtues of which it is the source. It renders that easy to the soul which without it would be difficult, if not impossible. By means of meditation we taste God, we are filled with love for Him, we learn to have a horror for sin, to hate the world and ourselves, to fly from vices, to practise virtue, to aim at purity of intention in all our actions, to have a reverence for holy things, and charity for our neighbor. Lastly, meditation is everything that is sweetest in religion. Let us ask the holy souls who practise it habitually as it ought to be practised, and they will tell you that it is a delicious moment for them, that it is a moment of paradise upon earth; let us imitate them and share in their happiness. “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is sweet” (Ps. xxxiii. 9). Do we hold meditation in high esteem? Do we look upon it in the bottom of our hearts as the greatest of all good things?

SECOND POINT

Preparation for Meditation

In order to become a man of prayer we must: 1st, be heartily determined to keep our conscience pure and to mortify our passions. He who does not care to mortify himself and to become better cannot hope to succeed in this holy exercise. He who will not detach himself from earth cannot rise to heaven. 2d. We must love recollection and break off our life of thoughtlessness, which, consuming itself in vain imagination, in loss of time, in greediness after riches, makes the soul spend itself upon all kinds of objects and grants to nature all that it asks. To be dissipated all day long and to be recollected in prayer are two things which are incompatible. 3d. Lastly, we must, the evening before, prepare the subject of our meditation, occupy ourselves with it when we are betaking ourselves to rest and in the morning when we rise. Is it thus that we have hitherto prepared ourselves for meditation?

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.