Patristic Era & Latin Church (Roman Rite) Spirituality & Monasticism

Be like a monk; replace your will with God’s, and be one with Him on Earth.

Email: conchristos@protonmail.com or Text/Call/Voicemail: (516) 595-2777

This fledgling group is for persons who are interested in learning and practicing Patristic and Roman Catholic mental prayer. Mental prayer is instrumental in subordinating the passions and the will to the dominance of right reason, which participates in God's Eternal Law (Divine Wisdom) when true and proper. Mental prayer nourishes and habituates all the virtues, chiefly the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity), by focusing the soul on God and detaching it from lower goods. Mental prayer offers intimacy with God, disposes the soul to grace, and maximizes spiritual progress.

This group presents the opportunity (on Long Island, NY) for in-person instruction, discussion, and practice of authoritative Patristic and Roman Catholic methods to the science (systematic knowledge) of mental prayer in order for participants (1.) to develop the virtues requisite to subjugate their passions and wills to the dominance of their intellects and to God’s will; (2.) to internally develop, habituate, and fortify the virtues; (3.) and to assist and support each other on their progress in asceticism, mysticism, sanctification, and spiritual perfection. Other opportunities include reading (silently or aloud) and presenting findings from authoritative ascetical and mystical theology books; praying the (pre-modernist) Most Holy Rosary; learning and praying other Church-sanctioned devotions such as the Stations of the Cross, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Holy Ghost, to Christ the King, to the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and to Our Lady of La Salette; privately consecrating oneself (making consecration oblations without a valid priest witnessing for the Mystical Body) such as to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Holy Ghost, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or St. Michael the Archangel; learning and practicing Gregorian chants; learning how to recite the Divine Office (not the Liturgy of the Hours) – possibly in anticipation of emulating its celebration and perhaps in hope to consecrate every canonical hour of every day to God. The loftiest and far-off goal of this group, or club, is for its participants to become a society of oblates emulating the monastic and contemplative life of religious (monks, nuns, etc.) – but that is not expected of every participant. Presently this group can range in form from a casual discussion group, to a book club, to a prayer group, to a morality support group, to a spirituality club, or to a catechetical instruction conference (i.e., catechesis, catechism class).

This group is in-person only; video-calling is not available. Sessions will be held on Long Island (N.Y., U.S.A.). To inquire about this group, please email conchristos@protonmail.com or text/call/voicemail (516) 595-2777. In your initial correspondence, please include your first name and the town/locality in which you live.

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The Saints & Pope Pius XII on mental prayer:

“The solitary that would attain to God must pray continually in his heart, not trusting to the tongue alone.”

-St. John Cassian (The Conferences of the Fathers 9.13; c. A.D. 420)

“Without continuance in interior [mental] prayer, no virtue can stand firm.”

-St. John Climacus (Scala Paradisi 4.1; c. A.D. 600)

“Prayer of the mind [oratio mentis] is necessary for the soul’s growth, for it perfects the infused virtues and prepares us for infused gifts.”

-St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae II-II, Q. 83, a. 1; c. A.D. 1271)

“Mental prayer is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him Whom we know loves us.”

-St. Teresa of Ávila (The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus 8.5; c. A.D. 1562)

“Contemplation is nothing else but a secret, peaceful, and loving infusion of God, which, if admitted, will set the soul on fire with the Spirit of love.”

-St. John of the Cross (The Ascent of Mount Carmel II.23.4; c. A.D. 1578)

“It is best to learn to silence the faculties and to cause them to be still so that God may speak.”

-St. John of the Cross (The Ascent of Mount Carmel III.2.2; c. A.D. 1578)

“Neglect of mental prayer is the chief cause of lukewarmness among religious and laity.”

-St. Alphonsus Liguori (Theologia Moralis IV.6; c. A.D. 1757)

“Interior prayer, or mental prayer, is the soul’s elevation of mind and heart to God… an indispensable complement to liturgical worship.”

-Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei (A.D. 1947)

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Sacred Scripture, St. John of the Cross, et al. on Catholic spirituality:

“Oh souls created for such glories, and called to them, of what are you thinking? With what are you occupied? How mediocre are your aspirations, and how wretched your pretended good! How sad is the blindness of your soul! You are blind to the most dazzling light and deaf to the powerful voices which solicit you. By allowing yourselves to be led on by what you consider happiness and glory, you do not see that you remain plunged in your wretchedness and your mediocrity, and you render yourselves ignorant and unworthy of the treasures destined for you.”

-Prologue, Spiritual Canticle, St. John of the Cross (c. A.D. 1584)

“Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

-First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians III, 16 (1st C.)

“God does not call the qualified; He qualifies the called.”

-Anonymous (often misattributed to St. Augustine)

“Sine intermissione orate.” [“Pray without ceasing.”]

-First Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians V, 17 (1st C.)

“Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God, abideth for ever.”

-First Epistle of St. John II, 15-17 (1st C.)

“We always remain beginners, because the soul, like a school, always demands more instruction and exercise.”

-Anonymous (often misattributed to St. Teresa of Ávila)

“And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them.”

-Prophecy of Ezechiel XXXVI, 27 (6th C. B.C.)

“But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.”

-The Apocalypse of St. John III, 16 (1st C.)

“Let the whole community of monks be bound together in a single robe of charity.”

-The Rule, Chapter 72, St. Benedict of Nursia (c. A.D. 530)

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A Brief Explanation of Mental Prayer

The general sequence for mental prayer is outlined by the sequence (that is usually expressed in Latin) “lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio.” That sequence is attributed to the French Carthusian monk Guigo II (also called, “Guido,” “Guy,” and “the Angelic”). Guigo II expounds the sequence in his treatise “Scala Claustralium” (“The Ladder of Monks”). The sequence is called “lectio divina” (“divine reading,” or “sacred reading”) because Guigo II prescribed reading to be the initial step in mental prayer. “Lectio” refers to the act of slowly and attentively reading, namely Sacred Scripture, and (mentally) noting any cognitive wakes, resonating referents, queries, or novel understandings therefrom (the topic, so to speak). “Meditatio” refers to the act of intellectual, discursive, reasoned, logical reflection, i.e., upon the informatiom from that which has just been read, or the topic, viz., in order to discern or determine an elevated or sophisticated conclusion or understanding thereof. “Oratio” refers to a spontaneous, sincere, and articulated, verbalized, or conversational prayer with God (whether vocal or interior), namely regarding the information or topic under consideration. “Contemplatio” refers to quieting the mind and being solely receptive, to the exclusion of all distractions and temptations to distraction, in order to perceive a response from God, such as knowledge, meaningfulness, disposition, or affect — attentively and intently submitting under God’s presence and spiritual-intellectual dependence. “Contemplatio” and its English equivalent “contemplation” mean “to gaze attentively,” or “(for an augur, oracle, or seer) to mark out a sacred area (“templum”) reserved for observation in order to make a discernment by divination.” The “lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio”sequence is not prescribed by the Church in any authoritative way but it is accepted as the standard format for conducting mental prayer — though other approaches to mental prayer exist as esteemed formats in their own right, namely St. Teresa of Ávila’s instructions in the progression of a devout life of prayer, and St. Ignatius of Loyola’s “spiritual exercises” (his treatise on which is by the same name) or “retreat” method which immensely employs the imagination to cultivate phantasms of Gospel scenes and participation in those scenes in order to culmiate in an explicitly affective colloquy with God.

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An Example Exercise (and Perhaps the Ultimate Exercise of Acquired Mental Prayer, Given its Type and its Object):

The Prayer of Simple Gaze upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus

This exercise is an original synthesis developed by the present instructor in June of A.D. 2026 but he suspects it may have been multiply (adverb; “multiplē”) discovered by many others before him.

The prayer of simple gaze is the highest type of acquired mental prayer, i.e., not infused (by grace) mental prayer. It is an act of acquired contemplation, i.e., attentive observation that is practiced and habituated. The object is to be observed with single-pointed focus to the exclusion of all other thoughts. It is not discursive meditation, which utilizes the powers of the intellect to reason and logically reflect, in order to determine conclusions or to receive divine illuminations, lights, enlightenment, insights, understandings. The prayer of simple gaze is attributed to the German Carthusian monk Ludolph of Saxony (from whose writings Basque Jesuit St. Ignatius of Loyola learned it) and also attributed, as a case of multiple discovery, to Spanish Franciscan friar Francisco de Osuna (from whose writings the Castilian Carmelite St. Teresa of Ávila learned it). The prayer of simple gaze employs the imagination to cultivate phantasms (i.e., mental representations, figments of imagination) and the rejection or silencing of all other thoughts – this does not amount to the refuted and prohibited condition of quietism, which entails the annihilation of one’s will, of interior acts of virtue, and of the rejection of interior graces, but rather the rejection of one’s own spontaneous, irrelevant thoughts and of temptations of all sorts).

The Object of this particular exercise is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The work of this exercise is the imagining of a phantasm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Requisite Knowledge:

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is conventionally depicted as being crowned with thorns as Jesus Christ’s head was at His Crucifixation. Jesus Christ’s body is alive since His Resurrection, therefore, His corporal Heart beats. Shortly after His death upon the Cross, Jesus Christ’s Heart was pierced by the Roman centurion Longinus to confirm Jesus’s death. Jesus’s Heart bled (or more precisely, released blood) whereupon both blood and water poured out from the wound on His side (which cured the blindness that Longinus had in one of his eyes when the divine fluids touched it). Thus is given as the details for the phantasm and as the words of the script (below): thorn-crowned, beating (the Heart beats), pierced (by the Holy Lance, the Spear of Longinus), and bleeding (from the wound made by the Lance).

Core Instructions:

Kneel (unless doing so causes distraction, such as pain, to the extent of failure to persevere in prayer). Close your eyes. Make the Sign of the Cross upon yourself while simultaneously saying the Invocation (i.e., “In the Name of the Father...”). Fold or clasp your hands together in the Catholic manner (fingers straight; hands in front of the chest and neck).

Pray a prefatory prayer in preparation for conducting the forthcoming mental prayer, petitioning assistance (for focus, perseverance, devotion, sincerity, integrity) in your session of mental prayer from, for example, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your Guardian Angel, or all of them.

With your eyes remaining closed, as vividly and as durably as possible, imagine the Sacred Heart of Jesus. As effortfully as possible, try to increase the vividness of your phantasm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And for as long as possible, try to maintain mental focus upon your phantasm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

To aid in the visualization of the phantasm, utilize the facts from the “Requisite Knowledge” section above by slowly articulating them vocally (rather than mentally), and interposed between articulating the name of the Object. Repeat any or all parts of this short script as needed to maintain focus or return focus upon the Object and Its details.

Script:

“Sacred Heart of Jesus. Thorn-crowned, beating, pierced, and bleeding. Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

This exercise is, additionally, efficacious for the impromptu rejection and replacement of temptations outside of a session of mental prayer.

When your mind wanders away from focus upon the phantasm, articulate again the Object of the mental prayer, i.e., the Sacred Heart of Jesus; and when your phantasm becomes devoid of its details, articulate again the given facts about it. Reject all distractions and all temptations to distraction. Maintain single-pointed focus upon your phantasm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

To add a bit of sacred language to this practice, one can use the Ecclesiastical Latin for “the Sacred Heart of Jesus” which is “Sacratissimum Cor Iesu.” Conventionally, that is abbreviated to “Cor Iesu” (“Heart of Jesus”). But beware that the use of words that are not of one’s native language or that have not been deeply internalized by oneself can be much less powerful for one’s mental acts.

Note that it is a pious habit to slightly bow one’s head every time he speaks or hears the name “Jesus” in any language, except when it is taken in vain.

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Syllabus Outline

[Under development. A draft copy is available upon request.]

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