Читать книгу The Practice of Mental Prayer - Father Rene de Maumigny - Страница 29

EXCELLENCE OF MENTAL PRAYER

Now all prayer is filled with this sweetness, for in its essence prayer is familiar inter- course with God like that of friend with friend, father with son; and consequently it is an intercourse of love.

And if you ask how far the sweetness of this love extends, the answer is: to such a point that we come to love what nature and the world detest: poverty, sickness, con- tempt, ingratitude, hard work and death. When rising from prayer, St. Francis Xavier used to cry: Lord, still more work! " It was prayer that inspired St. Teresa to cry from the bottom of her heart: To suffer or to die!"

To say that all souls who make serious prayer arrive at such transports of joy would be an exaggeration, but this is certain, that, by means of the light gained in meditation, everyone of these souls understands the value of suffering and learns that, during our mortal life, we are better able to respond to God's love by suffering than by any other means. Henceforth the soul succeeds not only in accepting the trials of this life with resignation, but still more, it prefers them to the deceptive joys which the worlding so ardently pursues.