The School of Love, February 18

PRAYER
[continued from yesterday]

Again, when prayer is irksome, when body and soul are weary, then, if prayer is not a matter of duty, it is of little use driving the soul against its own inclination. To pray long at such times, simply because one has made up one's mind to do so, does but make prayer a matter of greater horror; and this warning we have from perhaps the greatest student of the human soul, St. Ignatius Loyola. Long devotions at such times, car­ried out because they are long, may easily break the spirit and turn it away from prayer altogether.

On the other hand, when prayer is of duty, when the prayers we say are those which be­long to our state of life or are appointed by our rule, our practice must be the exact opposite. We must then not clip the time, but we must train ourselves to prolong it; and the reason is that prayer is then something more than a matter of inclination. It is the fulfilment of a duty; and no yielding in duty can possibly make for growth in prayer.

These then are three common hindrances to prayer, very often overlooked, and yet stunting prayer at its outset; and these are three remedies by which they may be met. Of course it may be, and for the fervent it often is, that apparent failure in prayer is due to other causes. With all the best will and effort and preparation in the world we may still seem to make little progress; the trial may come entirely from the hand of God.

Nevertheless it is possible that even this may depend upon the shortcomings of which we have spoken far more than we at first sus­pect; we may be making many efforts in many ways, and yet in some conscious particular we may know that we are wholly yielding to our­selves.

In any case we can go no further until the first evils have been cured; and in matter of fact God always in the end, or from time to time, rewards and encourages consis­tent effort enough and more than enough to make us feel that it has been worth while.

Hence to sum up the duty of the man of prayer: discipline or control of thought, discipline or control of body, discipline or con­trol of nature.

One might well add a fourth which might be called discipline of heart; for here, too, is a serious, even a fatal hindrance to prayer. We do not like to own it; we scarcely have the courage to face the conse­quence; still a disordered affection, a giving too much of oneself to any creature what­soever, a caring too much for anyone or any­thing, is often a cause of failure in prayer which would otherwise be good.

Human nature refuses to acknowledge it; it looks for any other cause; it will even ascribe it to its own wickedness; but if we would learn to pray we must be quite true to ourselves and in this matter most of all.
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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