Untitled - Saints' Books

"
As
Necessity of Mental Prayer. 46 1
his whole conduct! He is the garden of the Lord, a
garden enclosed. 1 It is closed to vices, to passions;
it is
filled with flowers and fruits of virtues; it is a paradise:
Thy plants are a paradise ofpomegranates with the fruits of
the orchard? And why Because ? it is the fountain of gar
dens, the well of living waters? Mental prayer
is the
source of living waters that continually waters the gar
den. Take away mental prayer, take away the fountain,
and then we say Mass and the Office with precipitation;
we preach in a different manner. Show me your beauti
ful detachment, your beautiful humility, your beautiful
modesty, . . . after the fountain has been taken away.
A priest without mental prayer
is a garden without
water, just as David said of himself in reference to the
time when he was far from God: My soul is as earth with
out water unto Thee." He is not even a priest; he is the
corpse of a priest, according to the saying of St. John
Chrysostom: the body cannot live without the
soul, so the soul without prayer
is dead and malodor
ous."
Oh, how one perceives even from afar the bad
odor of a priest who does not make mental prayer!
Happy, on the contrary, he who meditates on the law
of God, who applies himself to the holy exercise of men
tal prayer. The Holy Ghost compares him to a tree
planted by the rivers of water/
" 1
2 "
Hortus conclusus." Cant. iv. 12.
Emissiones tuae, paradisus malorum punicorum, cum pomorum
fructibus." Ibid. 13.
3
Fons "
hortorum, puteus aquarum viventium." Ibid. 15.
4
Anima mea " sicut terra sine tibi."
aqua Ps. cxlii. 6.
5 "Sicut
corpus, sine anima, non potest vivere, sic anima, sine oratione,
mortua est, et graviter olens." De or. Deo,
1. i.
6 Ps. i. 3.