Untitled - Saints' Books

"
So
45 8 Appendix.
bring
it back to the haven of salvation. But if this soul
does not go to mental prayer, because it does not think
of it, or thinks of it but little, it will continue to live in
its faults, in the dangerous
occasions in which it finds
itself, and it will end by falling into the abyss. Why ?
Because it walks in darkness, without light; it will find
itself at the bottom of the precipice without knowing in
what manner it fell over it.
1
Come ye to Him and be enlightened. What light would
we wish to have if we do not approach God by means
of mental prayer
? Where have so many saints, I ask,
where, without studying theology, have so many simple
men and women, so well learned divine things
if it was
not in mental prayer, this school of the saints ? Such
was a St. Hildegarde, who composed several books about
holy Scripture; a St. Magdalene de Pazzi, who spoke
so admirably of the perfection of God; a St. Teresa,
who wrote so well on mental prayer that she has be
come the admiration of the whole world, and the
Church wishes us to ask God for the grace of profiting
by her heavenly doctrine: we feed to our ghostly
health upon her 5
heavenly teaching."
Let us add a
St. Thomas Aquinas, who confessed that all that he
knew he had learnt in mental prayer; likewise a St.
Bonaventure, who said that he never had any other
Master than Jesus crucified. Come ye to Him and be en
lightened.
Let us, moreover, consider how much strength a priest
needs to overcome so many enemies, both exterior and
interior, that are continually laying snares for
his soul.
These enemies are the world, persecutions, human re
spect, passions, evil inclinations, temptations
of the
devil. Oh, how much more trouble does not the devil
take to make a priest fall than to make a secular fall!
1 "
Accedite ad eum, et illuminamini." Ps. xxxiii. 6.
2 "
Coelestis ejus doctrinae pabulo nutriamur."