5: “Considerations, the Second Part of Meditation” Flannery O'Connor's Andalusia Farms. Perhaps, like O'Connor, we should all find a place where we can let our imagination explore the presence of Jesus. More importantly, we should take the time to really reflect on how His presence transforms us. (photo. P. Smith)                  De Sales is careful to remind us that it is not enough to just imagine these scenes from Scripture; we need to use our intellect to examine how we are responding to what we have imagined. That is, we cannot just go outside and imagine we are on a mountain with Jesus; we should take the time to reflect on how that imaginative experience affected our minds, our bodies, and our emotions.   There always needs to be a period of reflection following meditation where our intellect applies vocabulary to our experience. Otherwise, that form of prayer can be empty and lack a...

4: “The Subject of the Mystery, The Third Point of Preparation” Statuary like this scene from the Gospel are opportunities for us to imagine being in the presence of Jesus. Without the statues, we can still use our imagination to place ourselves in the Gospel. (photo. P. Smith)                 De Sales admits that meditation can be a difficult mode of prayer. Indeed, he uses terms like “composition of place” and “interior lesson” to discuss the what it means to meditate. De Sales suggests that we start with a relatively easy meditation. He suggests we begin with a physical image of Jesus, as opposed to an ethereal or transcendent Truth of God. We should use our imagination to place ourselves in a Biblical scene and meditate on what we see, hear, smell, etc…. We can do this with our students. We can invite them to go outside and literally use their imagination to place themselves at the Sermon on the...

3: The Invocation, the Second Point of Preparation” Ideally, our priests should be models of the devout life. Often, they need the rest of the Church to help them to encounter God. (photo P. Smith)                 While the last chapter of De Sales’ book focuses on mindfully considering the presence of God and knowing that God is working through all things, this chapter discusses the need to ask God for His assistance in actually saying those prayers we need in order to grow in the devout life. He tells us to prostrate our soul and implore “his grace in order to serve and adore him properly”. This sort of prayer can be difficult, but luckily God gives us each other, the Saints, and the Angels to help us. De Sales tells us to invoke each other and, especially, the Saints and our Guardian Angels in the pursuit of deep, mental prayer before God. As teachers, we walk with our students in this pursuit. We ...

2: “A Short Method of Meditation, and First of the Presence of God, Which is the First Point of the Preparation” Just as Jesus, the child, brought people to the Father, so too can our students bring us to Him. (photo. P. Smith)                 De Sales tells his audience that many in his time do not know how to “pray mentally”. The same is True in the modern world. This applies, perhaps more so, to us, right now. In order to pray mentally, De Sales teaches that we need to, first, place ourselves in the presence of God and, second, invoke His presence. Indeed, God can work through all things to encounter us, so we remain aware of this Truth. As teachers, there are two things that we always need to remember. First, God can encounter us thorugh our students; they are Graces to us and we should treat them, as such. Second, our students can encounter God through us, so we should be diligent in our relation...

The Second Part of the Introduction Various Instructions for Elevating the Soul to God by Prayer and the Sacraments 1: “The Necessity of Prayer” We must be deliberate in our action and intention to get the right photograph. It takes waking up before dawn and planning to get the right shot. Prayer is similar. (photo. P. Smith)                  “[P]rayer places our intellect in the brilliance of God’s light…” Prayer is an intellectual assent to Wisdom and Grace of God. It is a choice we make to put ourselves in His presence and to let Him guide us to right thought, action, word, etc… to the point that all we do is good…all we do is virtue. De Sales tells us to practice mental prayer. That is, do not simply go though the motions of prayer; rather, be mindful…be deliberate. As teachers we certainly should be setting aside specific time for prayer in the presence of the Lord, as, again, we cannot ...

24: “We Must Purge Ourselves of Our Evil Inclinations”                 Indeed, we have “natural inclinations”. We have passions and desires that are characteristic of material beings. In fact, it is good to have these inclinations. Physical desires such as food, drink, sex, comfort, etc… are all natural and can be beneficial in our pursuit of the Devout Life. It is not the inclination, itself, that is sinful and damaging to our pursuit of the Devout Life. Instead, it is the action that flows from these inclinations that, when improperly oriented towed the ego or simple material Truth that causes the problem. We need to teach our students to be reflective and ever mindful of the purpose and reason for their actions. They can be taught how to orient their inclinations toward God so that all actions become part of a Journey toward the Devout Life. Do we focus on the shadow or on the mountain whose shadow ap...

23: “We Must Purify Ourselves of Affection for Useless and Dangerous Things”                 It is a mistake to tell students that things like sports, parties, nice clothes, movies, or music are, in and of themselves, evil. It is often the nature of youth to test those boundaries and to experiment in spite of the words of their elders and teacher. Perhaps the better path is to teach the rational thinking skills needed to critically discern the usefulness of such things in the pursuit of Sainthood or Devotion. That is, if our affection for these things limits us to those things, themselves, then it is our attachment to material things that is the problem… not the thing themselves. Our job as teachers, then, should not be to warn them or punish them; instead, it should be to teach them to aim higher than the material thing itself. We are, after all, made for much more than the material world. We have incli...