Author: Eugene Boylan
Pages: 172
Publisher: Scepter Publishers
Rating: 8
Reviewer: David Miller
ISBN: 0-933932-90-1
Summary: An excellent guide to mental prayer and the spiritual life in general
This book is an excellent description of the difficulties that most people will have with prayer, and ways to address or get around said difficulties. Boylan addresses the difficulties as they could be encountered by an individual soul; he stays away from cataloging them in exhaustive detail. Some of the difficulties discussed are:
- being stuck in the traditional Catholic meditative practice of closely considering a given mystery
- being afraid to start praying for fear that I am not acceptable to God
- being discouraged by periods of dryness or aridity, when God appears to be far away and prayer seems to be accomplishing nothing
- being unwilling to leave behind the early intoxicating warmth of God's apparent presence to the senses, in order to attempt the less sensible but more faithful union with God
- refusal to leave behind some precious thing, for example, refusal to give up one little characteristic sin
In addition to describing problems with prayer, Boylan prescribes positive ways to think about prayer. He sees prayer as an ever-deepening personal friendship with God and Jesus, and sees a lifetime of prayer following the same trajectory as a lifetime friendship with another person. He advocates addressing Jesus as if here were there in the room with you, as if Jesus is your closest friend.
I would like to quote the book on this matter:
"We can tell Him about our own day's work and compare notes with Him: 'Did You find the work so tiring? Were Your customers unreasonable and hard to please? Did Your back pain You after the continual bending over the carpenter's bench? Didn't You know much better than St. Joseph how to make things? --You Who made the whole world! How did You force Yourself to spend thirty years of Your short life in such a way, with the whole world waiting for Your teaching and Your deliverance?', etc., etc. Then we should talk to Him of our own life, of our difficulties, of our failings, of our shortcomings, of our sins. Oh, yes! especially of our sins! ... for this Man receiveth sinners and shall save His people from their sins."
Boylan also talks about how prayer can infuse your entire day, starting out with regular mental prayer, then overflowing into spiritual reading, and finally how all your waking actions can form a living prayer, to the extent that you keep yourself close to Jesus and keep Him in mind all the day long. However, he also advocates a grim determination to always keep mental prayer a separate distinct part of each and every day!
Boylan considers the interaction of prayer with the rest of your spiritual life; how prayer can strengthen your spiritual life, and conversely, how a lack or failing in your spiritual life can manifest itself as a difficulty in prayer. Following the analogy with human friendship, he describes how my protestations of love and fealty during prayer will ring hollow to my own ears, much less to Jesus', if I know that I intend to turn away from Him during some part of my day. I really liked Boylan's exposition of the "fourfold purity of conscience, of heart, of mind, and of action".
Unfortunately for us, Boylan addresses mostly those in the religious life (monks and nuns), and also priests. He addresses the laity only a few times, in passing. But from my personal experience of the prayerful life, and the problems I myself have had, I can attest that most all of this book remains directly applicable to us lay people.
One thing to keep in mind is that this book is not a general introduction to prayer, or a catalog of the types of prayer. Boylan refers us to St. John of the Cross and St. Therese for such works.
I want to close this review by quoting a passage towards the end of the book:
"However late it is when a soul sees the full possibilities of the spiritual life or finds the right way of prayer, it is of great importance that the resolve to advance to close union with God be not overcome by the fear that now it is too late. Even though the past has been stained by sin or time has been wasted through mistaken direction or an unsuitable way of praying, there can be nothing -- absolutely nothing of any sort whatsoever -- in the past that can be an insuperable obstacle to holiness if we but turn our hearts to God. He is our Savior, that is His name. He became man to save us from our sins, and surely He will save us from our mistakes! 'To them that love God, all things work together unto good, ' writes St. Paul, and that includes even our sins. God has infinite power and infinite mercy; He can utilize all our past and turn it to good account. No matter how late the hour or how great the obstacles, we must turn to God with unlimited confidence. In fact, since all the glory is to be His, there will always be some apparently insuperable difficulty or weakness on our part. Nevertheless, 'all things are possible to him that believeth'; no matter what is lacking for us, be it time or merit, 'our sufficiency is from God.'"
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