PRAY
The Heart of the Interior Life
Prayer is the most important practical work of the interior life because every other reform depends upon living contact with God. It is not an accessory added after doctrine and morality are settled. It is the living relationship in which truth becomes personal, repentance becomes a return to the Father, obedience receives strength, and the soul learns to surrender itself to grace.
FIDELITY IN PRAYER
Prayer Must Become the Center From Which the Day Is Lived
Prayer is the heart of the interior life and the first work that must be protected. As the spiritual life deepens, prayer moves from something added to the day toward the center from which the day is lived. The soul learns recollection, listens for God, and allows Him to act more deeply.
Do not rank prayer by emotion. Fidelity is more revealing than sweetness. Prayer must not be kept only when it feels fruitful and abandoned when it feels dry, inconvenient, or difficult.
“Prayer is where the truth about God becomes relationship with God.”
Study can tell us that God is Father; prayer places the child before Him. Moral teaching can identify the good; prayer obtains grace to love and choose it. Repentance can name the wound; prayer opens it to the Divine Physician.
A DAILY FOUNDATION
Mental Prayer and the Rosary
Two practices deserve immediate protection: thirty minutes of mental prayer each day and the daily Rosary. They do not replace the Mass, regular Confession, Scripture, obedience to the commandments, or the duties of one's state in life. They help us live all of those things with greater attention and love.
Mental Prayer
Mental prayer places the real contents of the heart before God. It trains the soul to remain before Him long enough for truth to enter the will.
Begin mental prayer with the Gospels. Bring your thoughts, desires, failures, attachments, duties, and decisions honestly before God. Listen, respond, and ask for the grace to conform your life to His will.
The Rosary
The Rosary teaches us to contemplate Christ with Mary and to carry the mysteries of His life into our own. It places the life of Christ before the mind and entrusts the soul to His Mother.
“Commit to the Rosary every day and to thirty minutes of mental prayer each day.”
A PRAYER THROUGH THE PIPELINE
The Chaplet of Perfection
The Chaplet of Perfection follows the seven stages of the Pipeline of Grace. It asks the Holy Trinity for the grace to advance from Fear of the Lord through repentance, belief, obedience, deeper prayer, abandonment, and transforming union.
The Chaplet begins by acknowledging our helplessness apart from grace and asking for the endurance to persevere. Each bead joins a prayer corresponding to one stage of the Pipeline with a Hail Mary. It concludes by asking the intercession of saints who teach confidence, prayer, surrender, and the pursuit of perfection.
FROM VOCAL PRAYER TOWARD UNION
The Development of Prayer
The traditional stages of prayer describe a movement from vocal prayer through deeper recollection and, by God's initiative, toward infused contemplation and union. These stages are not techniques to master or trophies to collect. They show what God desires to accomplish in a soul that remains faithful and increasingly surrendered.
The earlier stages involve our active cooperation and faithful practice. The deeper forms of infused prayer remain gifts of God and cannot be produced through technique or human effort.
A PRAYER AGAINST VAINGLORY
All Glory to God
Holy Trinity, prevent me from any attempt to steal Your glory. Never allow my heart to seek vainglory by desiring the praise of men, especially men who do not love You. Never allow me to pursue meaningless goals, but rather to see You as the end in all that I do.
Help me to understand that when I worry about what others think of me, it means I am thinking of myself and not of You, who are worthy of all my thoughts and all my heart.
Make You and Your judgment of me my only concern, and never let me do anything, externally or internally, in an attempt to rob You of Your glory.
Free me from any sin, demon, or attachment that binds me to seek praise, respect, or the high opinions of others, whether in public or in private.
All praise be to You, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
DEPENDENCE UPON GRACE
Allow God to Accomplish the Work
Prayer is not an attempt to perfect ourselves through our own strength. We cannot make ourselves perfect. Only God can accomplish this work within us.
The soul must ask for grace, remain faithful in prayer, surrender its self-will, and cooperate with what God asks. Growth in prayer should produce deeper repentance, greater obedience, stronger charity, and increasing conformity to Christ.
“The goal of prayer is not an unusual experience. It is union with God through faith, hope, and charity.”
A FUTURE PRAYER LIBRARY
Prayers for the Interior Life
The Catholic tradition contains additional prayers for surrender, healing, spiritual growth, charity, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and greater conformity to Christ. A future Additional Prayers page will organize these prayers carefully by purpose and source.
BEGIN IN PRAYER
Remain Before God
Protect a definite time for prayer. Bring the real contents of your heart before God. Remain faithful when prayer is consoling and when it is dry. Ask for the grace to know His will, obey it, and surrender yourself more completely to Him.