Читать книгу The Practice of Mental Prayer - Father Rene de Maumigny - Страница 14
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EXCELLENCE OF MENTAL PRAYER
that they regard themselves as unworthy of holding intimate converse with God. Poor mortals that we are, we can, in spite of our misery, aspire to this marvellous grace. St. Paul says in his Epistle of the Galatians: God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying: 'Abba, Father!' "1
The same Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans writes: ''You have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: 'Abba, Father!'"2 Now children may talk to their father simply and unconstrainedly.
Hence, nothing that the Fathers of the Church have said in their emphatic praise of prayer can astonish us.
"No practice is of greater importance, nothing we prize of more value in this life than prayer," writes St. Gregory of Nyssa.3 ''Think what happiness is granted to you, what glory is attached to the prayer in which we talk with God, in which we hold intercourse with Jesus Christ," says St. John Chrysostom.* One could not wish for grander praise, nor praise which would show more clearly the excellence of prayer.
1 Galat. 4: 6. 2 Rom. 8: 15.
2 De orat, domin. 4 De orando Deo, l. 2.
PRACTICE OF MENTAL PRAYER
CHAPTER II
FIRST AND SECOND ADVANTAGES OF PRAYER: IT ENSURES OUR SALVATION AND ENRICHES US WITH NUMEROUS MERITS
IT is an article of faith that prayer prop- erly so called, or petition, made with the requisite conditions, obtains, without fail, salvation, for Our Lord has said: Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you; for everyone that asketh receiveth."1 And again: Amen, Amen, I say to you, if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it to you."
The required conditions are: Humility, confidence, and perseverance.
These three conditions may be fulfilled in vocal prayer, which is the ordinary means of salvation, but they are much more easily realized in meditation. In this, indeed, while reviewing the events of his life in God's presence and in bitterness of soul, the Christian vividly feels his own weak-
1 Matth. 7: 7 2 John 16: 23.
