Aside from a basic regiment of daily vocal prayer, the next and most important aspect of any solid prayer life is a daily practice of mental prayer. However, if you mention the words ‘mental prayer’ to the typical lay Catholic, their eyes start to glaze over, as if we were speaking about some kind of mystical phenomenon so rare that the average person ought not even think about such things. But in reality, the Church has always suggested at least fifteen minutes of meditation a day for the laity.
This little book provides an extremely solid formation concerning what mental prayer is and also how to do it. Furthermore, being written in the classic catechism ‘question-and-answer’ format, it is quite easy to understand.
The only limitations of this book may be an overly dogmatic approach to the life of prayer and metal prayer’s place within it. Although mental prayer ought not be set aside, there are, of course, exceptions to this rule. And even though this book does provide information on ‘mixed mental prayer’ which is a form of mental prayer that can be taken-up when the soul finds that it cannot carry out meditation in the normal manner, it fails to address some other issues that occur in the spiritual life. The most important of these being the fact that there usually comes a time in the spiritual life, once the pilgrim has moved into the realms contemplative prayer, that the soul actually finds itself unable to meditate in a meaningful way, and is encouraged (by St. John of the Cross) to leave behind discursive methods and allow God to lead them along the ways of contemplation. (However, the spiritual life cannot easily be fit into tidy boxes, and this does not mean all forms of meditation necessarily stop, even when contemplation begins.)
The last issue that can arise from reading books like these is that it can seem to turn the life of prayer into something more akin to strict rule-following. While the rules are good and necessary to learn, an overly rigorous adherence to any ‘rules’ or ‘stages’ in the life of prayer can end up stymying the creative action of the Holy Spirit. But let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. This little book is an excellent place to begin one’s journey into the world of mental prayer.