4th Week after Easter: Monday

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow: 1st, upon the most ordinary causes of spiritual aridities, and, 2d, upon the means of preventing them. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to maintain ourselves in a spirit of recollection by frequent ejaculatory prayers and the offering of our actions to God; 2d, to combat dissipation, which is the principal cause of our aridities, by means of the mortification of the exterior and interior senses. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the advice of St. Paul to Timothy: “Take heed to thyself” (I. Tim. iv. 16).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore God making us enjoy, from time to time, in order to sustain our weakness, the sweets of His service and the milk of His consolations. Let us humble ourselves in His presence, that we so often, says St. Bernard, allow this precious milk to escape by the opening of our dissipated senses. Let us ask of Him grace to correct this great evil within us.

FIRST POINT

The most Ordinary Causes of our Aridities

There is amongst Christians an illusion which is too common; it is that which casts all interior troubles upon God and upon virtue, as though God called man to His service only to render him unhappy; as though virtue were a land which devoured all its inhabitants, and Christian perfection a state in which only bitterness is to be found. Doubtless God sometimes sends aridities to the best amongst souls, in order to sanctify them, to purify them and increase their merits. But most frequently the aridities and difficulties which we experience in prayer and meditation have their cause in ourselves. The general cause is tepidity, as we have already seen, but this cause is divided into several branches, with which it is important we should be acquainted. These branches are the passions, which throw us into a state of disorder; self-love, which causes distractions in our thoughts, desires which fill our minds, curiosity, which, filling our minds with worldly matters and exterior objects, deprives the soul of being able to fix its thoughts upon God; they are, also, negligence in ruling our vagabond will, in repressing our self-will, in detaching our heart from all that ties it down to earth. Strange contradiction! We want to be recollected in prayer, and everywhere else we allow ourselves to indulge in dissipation of thought; we would like to possess within us the unction of piety, and we allow ourselves to entertain a thousand vain thoughts, attachments, and desires, which, like a sponge, draw all unction out of the heart, dry it up and exhaust it, until they leave it devoid of all taste or feeling for divine things. A thousand times in meditation, at Holy Communion, in visits to the Blessed Sacrament, God gives us a feeling of fervor, a spiritual consolation, which is intended by Him to sustain our weakness; and immediately afterwards we allow our eyes to wander wherever curiosity attracts them; we yield to a fancy or to a caprice; we take too large a share in frivolous conversation, in worldly affairs; we lose our time in vain thoughts, in useless imaginations; and directly all the sweetness of piety vanishes, and we become cold, weary, and disgusted. Do not let us be surprised: “God is a jealous God” (Exod. xxxiv. 14; Deut. iv. 24). We leave Him for the creature; He leaves us in His turn. The spirit of grace and of prayer cannot ally itself with the license of the mind, which occupies itself with outward things; of the heart, which permits itself attachments; with the imagination, which flies from one thing to another. We ought, therefore, to impute to ourselves the greater portion of our aridities, and, instead of laying the blame of them on God and on virtue, seek the cause of them in ourselves, cut off this cause, and bear, in a spirit of penance, the state in which we find ourselves to be, and which is a just chastisement of our fault.

SECOND POINT

Means for Preventing the Greater Portion of our Aridities

Doubtless we cannot forestall the aridities which come from God, because they enter into the plan of our salvation; but we can forestall those which have their origin in ourselves. We can do so, 1st, by recollection, making of the bottom of our heart, as it were, a sanctuary, where we shall be alone with God only. We must, with sweet and peaceful attention, stand, like sentinels, at the door of this sanctuary, to keep the entrance closed against wandering thoughts and useless desires; and soon heavenly consolations will make in us a new Thabor, of which we shall be able to say, with St. Peter: How good it is to be here (Matt. xvii. 4); how good to pray here, to adore and to love! We can, 2d, forestall aridities by mortification, which separates the soul from creatures, at the same time that recollection unites it to God. A little sacrifice made for God brings down grace upon us and fills the heart with a delightful feeling. We are glad to have done something for a God so good, so amiable, and so great. It is then that we pray aright, that we perform all our exercises well, and that the unction of piety renders them easy; whilst, if we refuse God the sacrifice He asks of us, we are discontented with ourselves, the heart dries up, and is covered with an inexplicably black and sombre shadow, which takes away all taste for prayer and the things of God. Let us have courage to give ourselves up to recollection and mortification, and soon God will make us sensible of the sweetness of serving Him.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above