Читать книгу The Practice of Mental Prayer - Father Rene de Maumigny - Страница 31

EXCELLENCE OF MENTAL PRAYER 33

feet, in spite of eloquence and knowledge and tact.

Now how is the apostolic worker to become an instrument united to God? By prayer, in which he is accustomed to converse with God as a child with its father, seeking not his own glory but God's, doing not his own will but God's; trusting not in his own strength but in God, the Almighty and the All-Bountiful.

In order to teach us this lesson by His own example, Our Lord prepared Himself for his apostolic life by forty days' prayer in the Desert and, when about to redeem the world on Calvary, He willed to spend the night in prayer in the garden of Gethsemani.

Since that time, nothing great has been done in the Church without prayer. Those specially chosen by God as His instruments have become united to the Divine Worker only through prolonged prayer. At the end of ten days' prayer with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in the Upper Room, the Apostle saw the Holy Ghost descend in the form of fiery tongues, transforming them from men weak and worldly, into the men, filled with heavenly virtue, who converted the world.