Читать книгу The Practice of Mental Prayer - Father Rene de Maumigny - Страница 52

PRINCIPAL ACTS OF PRAYER

the Mystery, such as the Stable of Bethlehem, the Hall of the Scourging, Calvary, etc.

The advantages of this picture of the imagination are three:

The imagination is piously employed and tends less to spread itself on things foreign to the prayer. In this way one of the chief causes of distraction is avoided and the soul can more easily unite itself with God in peace.

In the second place, the sensitive appetite —a blind faculty, which is set in action piously or not according to the images presented to it—is turned from its perverse tendencies to tears of devotion or something similar.

Finally, these pictures give rise to holy thoughts in the intellect, pious recollections in the memory, and wholesome feelings in the will. No one can deny that the tears of contrition, or of sympathy with Our Lord in His sufferings, or of longing for Heaven, help to produce holy movements in the will.

However, we must not forget that there are souls not highly gifted on the side of the imagination, and which would spend