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MENTAL PRAYER Method of the Three Powers
DURING MEDITATION
WHAT PRECEDES THE POINTS OF MEDITATION
The Meditation itself has three parts or
periods; the beginning, the body and the end.
Something must be said of each. The beginning or entry into the Meditation is
all that precedes the subject-matter, or points,
namely the Act of Adoration, the Preparatory
Prayer, and the Preludes.
1. An Act of Adoration of God Almighty,
made in all humility by casting yourself on your
knees before Him—should some bodily ailment
prevent this outward act, be careful to increase
the interior reverence. This first act of Meditation
should be made with great affection of heart, and
should be preceded by the consideration noted in
the immediate preparation, What am I about to
do, and before Whom am I now appearing. Call
up, then, a lively faith, as if you saw the Heavens
opened above you, and therein God Almighty in
majesty, surrounded by innumerable hosts of An-
gels and Blessed. God, together with all His
Heavenly Court, is watching what you are about
to do and how you will make your prayer. With
this lively faith, recite the usual Preparatory
Prayer as devoutly as possible.
2. The Preparatory Prayer, customary before
every Meditation, usually comprises, in addition
to the act of adoration, or acknowledgment of
God's majesty and your own nothingness, an act
of sorrow and supplication for the pardon of your
sins, which ought indeed, to go before all prayer;
then the offering of yourself and all your powers
for God's help in praying well. Be careful to
have these acts proceed rather from the heart
than from the lips, and never omit this prayer,
even if, from some unforeseen accident, you come
late to the. Meditation.
3. What are called by St. Ignatius the Preludes should then be made.
The first Prelude is made to provide help for
the imagination and as a means of banishing distractions. St. Ignatius calls this the Composition
of Place, indicating that you should place, as it
were, before your eyes the subject matter on
which you are about to meditate. For instance,
if the subject of your Meditation is to be Christ
Crucified, you are to picture yourself as present
on Mount Calvary, where you see Our Lord Jesus
Christ nailed to the Cross between two thieves,
covered with wounds, from which blood flows on
all sides; He sees His Blessed Mother, with John, Magdalene and a few other holy women standing
beneath the Cross. The rest of the great throng
is composed almost entirely of wicked men, who
mock, blaspheme, etc.
If the subject is Christ's Nativity, you present
it before your eyes as it is usually painted—a
ruined stable, unprotected from the wind, with
a crib in one corner, in which the Divine Infant is wrapped in
swaddling clothes and lies weeping; Our Blessed Lady and St. Joseph standing
by, and if the Meditation so requires, one or
two shepherds, etc.
In this and similar instances the composition
of place, if well made, ought to be of great utility,
for it fixes the imagination upon a definite object,
whence it does not so easily wander. And if in
the course of the Meditation the imagination
should chance to wander, you must again have
recourse to the picture formed in the Prelude, as those do who wish
to examine any object minutely: if for any reason they turn their eyes
away from it or are distracted by a noise, they
immediately return to their examination, as soon
as they become conscious of the distraction.
You must carefully observe that in such matters, you ought not to represent the object as if
painted in a picture or as having taken place many
centuries back, but as if it was taking place before your eyes at that very moment, you being
present in person in the stable of Bethlehem, or
on Mount Calvary, so that your eyes see, your
ears hear all that passes at the moment.
But if the subject of Meditation be some matter invisible to the human eye, such as sin or
virtue, or any other abstract subject, this Prelude is not usually so helpful, unless you have
an extremely vivid imagination. Yet even in this
case some composition of place can be made. For
instance, if the subject of your Meditation is to
be sin, you can, as St. Ignatius says, imagine your
soul shut up with your body as in a prison and
yourself an exile among brute beasts—or you
may picture sin to yourself under the form of a
most loathsome and terrible monster; or one of its
effects, such as the everlasting fire prepared for
sinners, man under the power of the demon,
bound in fetters and on the very point of being
buried into that abyss of torments, etc.
These and similar images may be employed according to the nature of the subject. The image
or Prelude should be fixed the day before in preparing the Meditation, but a variety of them
should not be chosen nor should much time be
spent in seeking or elaborating them. If nothing
readily presents itself, this First Prelude should
be limited to simply recalling to mind the subject of the Meditation.
Lastly, if the matter of Meditation be words
of Our Lord, the First Prelude consists in placing yourself among His disciples and other
listeners and in receiving the words as if from
the lips of the Divine Master. In the same way,
if the matter of Meditation be other words of
Holy Scripture, you should in the First Prelude
listen to these words as though spoken audibly
by the Holy Writer to whom their authorship belongs, or as coming to you from Heaven and directed to you in a special manner; and so on, in
other cases.
The Second Prelude is simply a petition for
grace, not grace in general to meditate well (for
this grace is included in the Preparatory Prayer),
but the particular grace of obtaining the fruit proposed in this
Meditation. Two other things are usually to be asked for,
enlightenment of the understanding, and movement of the will, so as to both
know and will. For instance, if the subject is sin,
we beg the grace to know how great an evil sin
is, and to be profoundly moved in will to detest
and abhor it.
A formula addressed to the Three Divine Persons to be used in this second Prelude may easily
be found, to which in each Meditation we should
add the grace which applies to this Meditation in
particular.
If the subject is an historical incident, St. Ignatius tells us, before the two Preludes just described, to recall briefly the circumstances of the
incident, then make the composition of place, and
finally, the petition for grace, thus making three
Preludes.
The whole of this first division, namely, the
entry into the Meditation, consisting of the Act
of Adoration, the Preparatory Prayer and the Preludes, should not,
generally speaking, last
more than four or five minutes at most.
BODY OF THE MEDITATION
APPLICATION OF THE THREE POWERS
The body of the Meditation consists of the
Points. Two or three or even more of these
should usually have been prepared beforehand.
The Meditation proper consists in examining and
weighing these Points and in seeking nourishment
for the soul from them.
We shall say nothing here about the division
of the Points, since they are always determined
upon elsewhere, or set forth in some book or
manuscript. But how the matter of Meditation
should be developed, how the mind is to be occupied with the truth set forth in the Points of the
Meditation and how it should keep itself busied
in the examination of 'this truth, how the fruit
must be sought and gathered, how the subject is
to be applied to the soul's present condition—of
all this something must be said here.
According to St. Ignatius' idea and teaching,
Meditation consists in the application of the three powers, namely,
of the memory, the understanding and the will. And if all these faculties of the
mind are rightly applied, the Meditation will be
well made. Now all three powers are to be applied to each Point, and even one Point may provide sufficient matter for the whole Meditation.
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