St Chantal on Prayer

July 3rd
St Chantal on Prayer
With Love and for Love

Fidelity of soul towards God consists in being perfectly resigned to His holy will, in enduring everything that His goodness allows in our lives, and in carrying out all our duties with love and for love, especially that of prayer.  In prayer we must converse with our Lord very similarly concerning our little needs, telling Him what they are, and remaining submissive to anything He may wish to do with us.  We  must with constancy reject the distractions which come to us in prayer and during the Office.  By way of preparations for prayer, the thing to do is to go at it with deep humility and awareness of our nothingness.  We must invoke the help of the Holy Spirit and that of our good angel, and then hold ourselves very still during this time in God's presence, full of faith that He is more in us than we in ourselves.  And though our prayer be without words or consideration, there is no danger in this, because the good success of prayer depends neither on words nor on study.  Rather it is the simple raising of our minds to God:  and the more simple and the more striped of feeling, the surer.  As for thinking of our sins during prayer, this we must never do.  A simple humbling of our soul before God as regards all our offenses, without thought of this one or that, is enough.  Most of the time, such thoughts only act as distractions.