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Our Actual Self in Prayer from The Art of Mental Prayer All day long we go about disguised, to a very large extent hiding our real self that others may not see what we are, and this not seldom to such a degree that the disguise becomes more real to us than our actual self. But when we come to pray, our real self, torn by a myriad interests, our interior mental life, crowded with distractions, surges out into that silent sanctuary wherein we seek the peace of God. 'If we find the door shut, why should we be surprised?' We must be convinced that little things are often as dangerous in hindering our walk in the path. For instance there is no occasion for us to hear and see, still less to say, half the things which, if they do not lead to sin, yet disturb the peace and calm of the soul. 'Keep thy tongue from evil' and from that idle speaking to which our Lord refers so sternly, for talkativeness and all that it leads to are most harmful to the spiritual life. It is too often the mark of a shallow spirit; indeed, it would seem that the less a man thinks--and thinking is fast dying out--the more he talks. 'Talking,' said Faber, 'is a loss of power," and it certainly tends to dissipate that sense of the presence of God which is the greatest guard of the soul. Deliberately to choose to be silent at times, to watch and weigh our words when we speak, would accomplish more for many than the pious practices they so much enjoy. Another sphere in which custody of the sense is necessary, especially in view of our prayer, is that of concentration in the spirit of St. Catherine of Genoa's 'One thing only and one thng at a time.' To pray well demands not merely concentration, but concentration which has nothing forced or violent about it. St. Francis de Sales never tires of insisting upon the need of calmness and tranquillity in our approach to God. But to have this at our prayer means that we must strive for it outside of our prayer, and one of the greatest aids to this is to learn to do each thing as it comes, as if it were the only thing we had to do, and having done it, or being compelled to leave it to go on to another duty, to do so in the same spirit. The world of affairs is full of men who are intensely recollected because they are intensely interested in some particular aim or project. They do a thousand things a day, but behind all they do, dominating and influencing all their life, is one supreme thing. They are not always actually thinking of it; they may, indeed, and will at times, be thinking of and doing the common-place things, eating, drinking, playing, that all men do. But always, even if not consciously at the moment, one thing and one alone is supreme and central; for that thing they live; without it, life to them would lose all meaning. They are men of recollection. And recollection in the spiritual life means precisely the same thing; it is the spirit of the man who is possessed with the reality of God as the true end of all human life. We need a conversion to God, not merely from sin; 'seek the Lord and your soul shall live,' 'for if ye truly seek Me with all your heart ye shall surely find Me,' and to find God is to have found that one absorbing interest before which all else is as naught. Bede Frost. English priest, Church of England
The Art of Mental Prayer
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