The School of Love, February 17

PRAYER
[Continued from yesterday]

...Secondly, if bodily ease is found, after an honest self-examination, to be a hindrance to prayer, then not in time of prayer only but at other times also we must train the body to give up its comfort for the sake of energy of mind and heart.

It is not enough to wait till the time of prayer comes in order to begin our educating of the body; then, not only are the reasons for relaxation more urgent and apparent, but the habit of always yielding tells heavily against us.

Lazy-bodied people at ordinary times have no sufficient vigour with which to resist laziness of body in time of prayer. On the other hand a little sacrifice at other times, gradual inuring of ourselves not to have absolutely all the comfort that our bodies seek, reacts in prayer and gives us the physical strength to resist this second hindrance.

Thirdly, if, as we have said, nature resists the supernatural effort to be made in prayer, if prayer time is a time of weariness and agony, then there are three things to be done; for, be it noticed, this is a hindrance to prayer much more likely to come from without than from within, much more likely to be a real trial than merely a consequence of our own unfaithfulness and self-indulgence.

First of all at other times, which are not strictly times of prayer, when the spirit is moved to pray, to utter an ejaculation, to answer the ringing of the Angelus, to pay a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, let it not be too easily thwarted. Let it be allowed to pray when nature does not seem to be in conflict; gradually nature itself will learn to "taste and see how sweet is the Lord."....
[to be continued]
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From The School of Love and Other Essays
by The Most Reverend Alban Goodier, S.J.
Burns, Oates, & Washburn, Ltd. 1918