The School of Love, February 14

PRAYER
[Continued from yesterday]

...Prayer is a delicate flower needing to be guarded and tended; if we would have it in full bloom we must look well to it, both in its growth and in its hey-day, and in all its surroundings. What, then, are some at least of the precautions we should take?

They are best learnt by each one from his own per­sonal experience; there is no other road to prayer; not what we have read in books, or what we have heard from others, but exactly as much as we have learnt from ourselves and no more.

Here at least may be suggested a few pre­liminary warnings. When we examine our prayer or our failure in it, the first thing we usually have to say is that our minds have been far afield.

We began well enough - or we did not, which is much more common than we are always willing to allow - but almost immediately we were lost. People we know wandered through our brain, above all two classes; those we like best and those we like least.

With the former we built our castles in the clouds; the latter we pelted with torrents of abuse, and saw ourselves in imagina­tion triumphantly stamping on their prostrate forms; or events of the past, or imaginary events of the future, turned themselves over and over, distorted themselves, mixed them­selves up, and usually left us either humbled at our proneness to evil, or grumbling at somebody's imagined injustice towards us. Let us humbly confess it; this or such as this is often the sum total of our morning medita­tion....
[continued]
___________
From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918