June 3rd
St Chantal on Prayer

The first piece of advice about prayer is that anybody who wishes to pray, unless drawn and raised to God in an extraordinary fashion, must prepare himself according to the phrase of the wise man:  "Before prayer prepare your soul, think where you are going and to whom you mean to speak."

Of meditations badly made, so very many are only the result of a lack of preparation.  This preparation is twofold, the first remote and the second proximate.  Remote preparation consists in nothing more than this: Peace of conscience, watchfulness over our senses, a normal awareness of God, a familiar conversation with the Divine Majesty in one's soul, and above all the liberation of the soul from all ungoverned affections and passions.  The fact is that we must strip ourselves of anything which can trouble our minds or conscience and which can prevent us from maintaining ourselves in a spirit of recollection and interior liberty.