Mental prayer

You remember that there are two kinds of prayer, vocal prayer using words, and mental prayer which is without words, or only involves a few words.  In this kind of prayer, we close our eyes and look at God with sorrow for our sins, or love or trust or longing, or offer ourselves to him without necessarily saying anything at all.

We can divide mental prayer up into three parts: Picture, Pray and Promise.  I will give you an example so that you can see what I mean.

Picture and Pray

First, after remembering God’s Presence, we picture to ourselves one of Our Lord’s parables, or some event in his life.  It might be, for example, his Crucifixion.  So we close our eyes and imagine that we are at the foot of the Cross with Our Lady and St John.  We think how he hung and suffered there to save us from our sins.  That will lead us to pray by looking at Jesus in sorrow for the sins we have committed.  Then, after a time, we can go back and picture the Crucifixion again and think how Jesus must love us to have suffered like that for us.  And that will lead us to pray again by looking at Jesus with our eyes closed and our heart filled with love for him.

Promise

Picture, Pray and Promise.  We end our mental prayer by making a promise or resolution to Jesus, using our own words  It might be, for example, that we will try especially hard not to commit this or that sin again, or to be nice to someone whom we do not like.

It is most important, of course, that we should have a quiet place for mental prayer.