SOME HINTS ON PRAYER, Part IV
A CORRESPONDENT has suggested a difficulty in his prayer which is well worth our consideration. He opens his prayer-book; he reads, let us say, the prayers before or after Confession; the words are good, he is pleased to have them and to say them; but all the time he has the suspicion that they are not his own.
He comes to Confession with the weight of sin upon him; he hopes and believes that by doing what is enjoined upon him he will be freed from his burden; he makes his Act of Contrition, he renews his Purpose of Amendment, with al1 the earnestness of which his soul is capable; but he tells himself all the time that he has done this kind of thing before, and nothing much has come of it; and he wonders to himself whether all the time he is not soothing himself with mere words, since his resolution seems to come to so little.
In the first place, for his consolation, and for the consolation of the very many who labour under the same suspicion of themselves, let us say at once that this very attitude of mind is in itself a good sign, almost a sure sign, that all is well....
[continued tomorrow]
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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
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