Mental Prayer, Part 3

‘We congratulate you sincerely upon having brought out so clearly the absolute necessity of the interior life for those engaged in good works, a life so necessary for the success of their ministry.’ ~~ Pope Benedict XV to Dom Chautard, author of The Soul of the Apostolate

Why mental prayer? If I'm going to spend at least thirty minutes every morning doing something, I want to be very, very sure I'm engaged in a worthwhile endeavor. So, why mental prayer?

‘So many enterprises in our time, and yet so often fruitless: why is it that they have not put society back on its feet? … Why? Because they are not firmly enough based on the interior life, the Eucharistic life, the liturgical life, fully and properly understood. Leaders of Catholic Action, at the head of these enterprises, have been full of logic, talent, and even of a certain piety. They have poured forth floods of light, and have managed to introduce some devotional practices: and that, of course, is already something. But because they have not gone back nearly enough to the Source of life, they have not been able to pass on to others that fervor which tempers wills to their great task.’ ~~ Dom Chautard, The Soul of the Apostolate, pp. 186-7

Once again, I can attest to the truth of the good father’s words—as if he needed my endorsement! But for what it’s worth, I remember so many past efforts where I attempted to do what I thought were “good works”, even going so far as to pray to do “God’s Will”. And yet, in retrospect – looking back – the reason my efforts bore so little fruit may have been because I neglected my interior life.

Jesus is the only source of Life. In and through Him we receive all power to do whatever it is He has given us to do.

‘I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.’ John 10:10 The development of the interior life – through regular mental prayer – is the recognition that Christ dwells within us and wants to aid His apostles in performing His Father’s Will.

Father Chautard teaches Eleven Truths regarding the Interior Life: (I will list the first three today, continuing on with the others in future posts.)

1. ‘The supernatural life is the life of Jesus Christ Himself in my soul, by Faith, Hope and Charity; for Jesus is the meritorious, exemplary, and final cause for sanctifying grace, and as Word, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, He is the efficient cause in our souls.’ This, isn’t to be confused with the Real Presence proper to Holy Communion, but a presence of vital action which lies deep within us and God ordinarily hides from the soul so as to increase the merit of faith. Our text contains more on this…

2. ‘By this life, Jesus Christ imparts to me His Spirit. … And thus I tend to realize the ideal of the INTERIOR LIFE that was formulated by St. Paul when he said: “I live, now not I, but Christ, liveth in me.”’

3. ‘When Jesus … becomes my light, my ideal, my counsel, my support, my refuge, my strength, my healer, my consolation, my joy, my love, in a word, my life, I shall acquire all virtues.’

One other thing Fr. Chautard stresses is holy reading in the evening, reading which will awaken in the apostle the desire to begin the following day with mental prayer. It is also useful to make many loving ejaculations throughout the day. Just as the modern person calls, texts, e-mails or talks to friends, family, loved ones, Our Lord Jesus should be “called” very often throughout the day:

“Hello Jesus! This is your dearest child! I am here! How are You right now my sweet Jesus? For once I don’t want anything, except to worship and adore You! I lift my little heart to you. Join it with Your Sacred One! Stay close to me tonight dearest Savior and thank You so so much for all of the many ways You have blessed me today. Kiss Your Mother for me! Good night!”




The Food Which Endures: Living a Eucharistic Life: Devotion to the Sacred Heart

Mental Prayer, Part 2

"The devil knows that he has lost the soul that perseveringly practices mental prayer" ~~ St. Teresa of Ávila.

What is mental prayer?

Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O. says, “Mental prayer is real hard work, especially for beginners.” I can attest to that! This is only my third day – of my nine hundred and ninety-ninth time – of starting a practice of regular morning mental prayer and I'm struggling as usual. My biggest problem always is staying awake! No matter what I do, I want to fall back asleep. Sorry God, but there it is. Yes, Father Chautard, mental prayer is hard work! Still I am determined, with God's help, to continue.

What else is mental prayer?

St. Teresa says, “Mental prayer is nothing but a friendly conversation in which the soul speaks, heart-to-heart, with the One Who we know loves us.” Dom Chautard goes on to say, “It would be blasphemous to imagine that God, Who makes me feel the need and at times the attraction of this converse, and what is more, makes it an obligation for me, should not want to make it easy for me. Even if I have long neglected it, Jesus calls me tenderly to mental prayer, and offers me special help in speaking this language of faith, hope and love...”

A friendly conversation...heart-to-heart...one who I know loves me...called tenderly... Hmmmm...better and better! Yes, I think I can do this.

Each morning I begin my prayer time as if I am having a simple one-on-one conversation with a dear friend. Usually I have my Bible in my lap. Sometimes I refer to it, but mostly I just hold it. I tell Jesus how much I love Him and I ask Him to watch over me and my loved ones for the coming day. Sometimes I complain and sometimes I complain ... a lot. Other times, I tell Him how grateful I am for my many blessings. I'm not very consistent. But that's okay, Jesus knows me. I'm not going to 'fool' Him, so why pretend? And after I finish whining or ranting He and I both know that I have to go ahead and do what's required. Still, somehow it's better after I've told Him.

When my thirty minutes is almost up, I say my usual morning prayers and then I quit. I'm not exactly sure this is how it's supposed to go. My guess is that if you got a hundred Catholics in one place practicing mental prayer, they'd each do it slightly differently. I'm also pretty sure that if I actually stick with it this time, I'll learn quite a bit and my prayer life will deepen. In the meantime, the important thing is to keep at it.

Dearest Mother Mary, please help me remain faithful to this simple daily practice.

Mental Prayer, Part 1

Beginning again...

'What a wonderful Ideal is that which I behold in You, my Jesus. But is my life in harmony with that perfect Exemplar? That is what I now set out to discover, under Your earnest gaze, O my Divine Companion. Now You are all Mercy; but when I come before you in Particular Judgment – then at a single glance You will take in all the secret motives underlying the smallest acts of my life. Am I living according to this Ideal? Jesus, if I were to die right now, would You not find that my life is in contradiction with it?

Good Master, what are the points that You want me to correct?'

~~Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O.

I was hoping to find the text to The Soul of the Apostolate on-line somewhere. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made the jump yet.* I'm not sure exactly why that is; it's an indescribably accessible book on prayer and the spiritual life. In fact, I can see how an ordinary soul (like me) with nothing but Holy Scripture, this book, and the help of the Holy Spirit, could make great progress ... if I would but apply myself.

Published in 1946, just at the end of World War II, The Soul of the Apostolate was translated by the youthful Thomas Merton, whose spiritual autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, was written only two years later. I hope to return to that classic as well and see if I can detect French Dom Chautard's influence on the American Trappist.

Ah! But again I digress! This is how a booklady gets herself in trouble. The point of this post was the opening quote (above) from page 206 and that all important question:

Good Master, what are the points that You want me to correct?

* After publishing this, I am happy to report, I discovered the text on-line here.

Soul Searching -- The Journey of Thomas Merton

One of my mentors and favorite authors is Thomas Merton. Difficult to pin down, he is alternately described as a Catholic mystic, a spiritual rebel, a modern pilgrim, a compulsive writer and a beatnik-turned-monk. He is all of these and so much more besides.

It was his relentless quest for Truth—for God—which drove him all his life and it was this search which is explored in this recent film by Duckworks, Inc., called, Soul Searching—The Journey of Thomas Merton.

Born in France in 1915, Merton had an unusual upbringing—forced to leave Europe due to World War I, his mother died when he was six, then his father’s avant-garde lifestyle took him back and forth across the Atlantic until he was eventually left an orphan with one younger brother.

Although financially provided for himself, the young Thomas came of age at a time when the rest of the world was entering the Great Depression. This further set him at odds with what he saw around him. The documentary discusses the disgust he felt with himself after a night spent in dissipation when morning came; he’d watch the rest of the world going about their lives with a purpose he knew his lacked. Soon, his own purpose was to find him as well.

Shortly thereafter he experienced a dramatic conversion to Catholicism which he later described in his youthful autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain—published ten years later in 1948, which may well be the first book I ever read by Merton.

My own journey to Father Louis, as he was known after he was ordained at Abbey of Gethsemani at Trappist, KY, goes back so far I cannot even remember the first time I heard of him or the first book of his I’ve read. He absolutely fascinates me. His writing is alive and compelling; he writes on seemingly dry subjects with an intensity which must have been electric when he was speaking the same words to a retreat group or a class of novices.

Watching this moving testimony to the life and works of Father Louis, I want to go back and pick up his books again. He was a 20th Century pioneer in Catholic spiritual renewal. He reminded us we're all called to pray contemplatively—there are not two paths, one for the elect and another for everyone else. In this, he was echoing almost lost teachings of the doctors of the Church, Sts. John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. Mental prayer and meaningful spiritual lives are not just for priests and nuns. Nor are we to be discouraged by our own sinfulness, inadequacies and failures.

‘Faith means doubt. Faith is not the suppression of doubt. It is the overcoming of doubt. And you overcome doubt by going through it. The man of Faith who has never experienced doubt, is not a man of Faith.’ ~~Thomas Merton

Merton’s early writing on prayer, spiritual biographies and conversion would later move on to more controversial issues, including Christian responsibility in race relations, violence, nuclear war and economic injustice. He died in 1968 in Bangkok, Thailand at age 53 due to an electrical accident. He left behind over 60 books, 2000 poems and countless letters, journals and various other documents. As I said early on, he was a compulsive writer. Make it a point to see Soul Searching and read Merton!

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The Dog Woman

A Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The Canaanite Woman is one of my favorite stories—people—in the entire New Testament. I remember puzzling over Our Lord’s seemingly callous treatment of her when I was a child. Back then I knew that repeated pleas – or pestering – adults for something never got you anywhere. The Gospel passage didn’t make sense, but then much about the mysterious world of grown-ups doesn’t mean anything to us when we’re still young. And sadly, so many of us learn all too soon to stop asking for what we need, to stop trying. We give up and shut up. We become everything the Canaanite Woman was not.

Which is precisely the point of the story. There was a time I thought Jesus was just toying with her, testing her tenacity, so to speak … and to a certain extent He is. In Consolation for My Soul, Thomas Á Kempis writes,

‘Remember that verse in Matthew? 'One doesn't take bread baked for the tots and toss it to the dogs' (15:26) That's what the Lord said to that Canaanite woman. She was one of those impossible pagans with outrageous requests who dogged His footsteps while on earth. The Evangelist almost called her that Canine woman. But rereading that passage, I find my wretched state now matches hers then. She replied humbly but firmly then; I can only hide behind her skirts.’

The dog woman?! I can think of a word – which starts with a “B”, means ‘female dog’ and is even less complimentary. Can’t you almost read that into what the Apostles say about her? She was so annoying!

And yet! This was her daughter! Many years ago when my first daughter was born, something happened to me; I changed radically. This new little helpless being was placed into my arms and suddenly I grew fangs. I distinctly remember telling my husband a few weeks later that although I didn’t believe in violence, I was sure I could – and would – do anything necessary to protect my new baby.

So to the Dog Woman, it didn’t matter what anyone thought about her or called her. It didn’t matter if Our Lord ignored her. She wouldn’t be put off. She was there to do whatever was necessary. But it was more even than love for her daughter, dogged determination and a lack of pride that kept her one step behind Jesus. It was her faith. She knew He, and He alone, represented healing for her daughter. So she was willing to take whatever scraps Jesus would throw her, knowing that His castoffs would be better than anything else anyone could offer.

And for that, Christ honors her by calling her, “Woman”. I’m not sure, but I don’t think Jesus calls another “Woman” in the Gospels besides His Mother. To share anything with Our Lady is indeed to be esteemed highly. But then Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matthew 12:50)

Pray for me Dog Woman! I desire to have a faith as strong, humble and beautiful as yours.

Thank You Father Rother!

Yesterday, the 28th of July, my in-laws and I headed out on the Northwest Expressway going – you guessed it – northwest to the little town of Okarche, birthplace of Father Stanley Rother. It was a hot, windy day on the Oklahoma plains, a good day for a pilgrimage.

Our destination was Holy Trinity Catholic Church, in Okarche, where we arrived a little before noon. For those who don’t know, a pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred place or shrine; it can cover a long distance, or be a search for some exalted purpose or moral significance. In my case, this was a personal spiritual pilgrimage undertaken in honor of the 28th anniversary of Father Rother’s martyrdom. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve long wanted to tour this town, worship inside the church and perhaps even visit the grave of this inspirational priest. Several times, I planned to take my children, but something always came up. We had called our family homeschool, Father Stanley Rother Academy. We said the prayer for his canonization every morning as a part of our daily prayers … but somehow we never made the short trip to Okarche. I felt a little sad as I arrived and saw just how close the town was to us.

When we drove up, Channel 4 News¹ was interviewing a woman in front of Holy Trinity Church about why she had come today. She had tears in her eyes when she spoke about her admiration for Father. Was it my imagination, or did the questions coming from the interviewer and the camerawoman sound hostile? I handed the woman a tissue when the interview concluded.

Holy Trinity is a beautiful Gothic-style, stone and brick church, which is a well-known historical landmark in the area. Built in 1903, it is older than our state, and its outer magnificence is only surpassed by its interior serene beauty. I had come to do an hour of Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in response to the write-up in our diocesan newspaper, The Sooner Catholic. (See page 15 of the July 12, 2009 edition for the article.) Even though my in-laws aren’t Catholic, “Mom” and “Dad” joined me for Holy Hour. It was their first experience of this particular Catholic tradition, but they were very used to attending other Catholic events with me, beginning almost twenty-five years ago when they attended our wedding in the chapel at RAF Mildenhall, UK.

After Adoration, we admired the small collection of memorabilia at the back of the church devoted to Father Rother, including some of his vestments. Then we photographed the outside of the church, including the statue pictured above, and went to lunch at the local Tower Café. Just as our food was set down before us, a nice-looking gentleman came up and said, “Didn’t I just see you over at the church a little while ago?” He was specifically addressing my father-in-law who said that yes, we’d just come from there.

With the warmest possible voice and manner and a smile as wide as an Oklahoma plain, he said, “I thought I recognized your bald head! Hi! I’m Tom Rother², Stan’s youngest brother.”

You could have picked me up off the floor … if Tom hadn’t sat down right next to me and blocked me into my booth seat! He proceeded to stay for the next twenty minutes—or so—and ‘shoot the breeze’ with us about “Stan”, their family, Oklahoma and Indiana—where my in-laws are from, farming, families in general, and just general ‘down home’ folk’s talk which just showed that farming and farming folk don’t know anything ‘bout state lines. Tom Rother, I discovered, was just a bit younger than my in-laws and they had a world in common. I reveled in just being the ‘fly on the wall’ for most of the conversation.

Tom had us laughing and feeling like we’d known him all our lives. As he was getting ready to leave, he said, “You are coming to Mass later at 5?” as if it wasn’t so much a question as a statement, and Dad said, “We should be coming back through just about then.”

We did some other sightseeing but we were back at Holy Trinity in time for Mass, after which Tom, and his lovely wife Marty, took us out to the graveyard. There we learned more family history, saw the family plot and gravestones and even encountered a representative and source for copies of The Shepherd Cannot Run ($10) and DVD, No Greater Love… The Story of Father Stanley Rother ($10), both of which I was looking for and will be reviewing in the not too distant future.

As we drove home, my own heart and spirit were soaring with gratitude and love. I have no doubt that Father Rother arranged everything, through Our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe in the Communion of Saints!

Father Rother, your brother and his wife are such warm and wonderful people. I look forward to meeting you too someday! Thank you!





¹ I was told by a friend at work today that she saw me on the news last night. Ah! My three or four seconds of fame and I missed it! We didn't get home until almost nine and then we had a whopper of an Oklahoma hail and wind storm come through which left us without power for two hours, split our pear tree down the middle and knocked over the freestanding basketball hoop blowing out the rear windscreen of one of our old cars. Guess I was just a little bit busy... ☺

² The second picture is yours truly with Tom Rother standing behind Father Rother's grave.

What is that?