Why can mental prayer be so difficult? Review of Boylan’s 'Difficulties in Mental Prayer'
“Let him proceed to pray to Our Lord in his own words as soon as he can and as often as he can.”
Introduction
This is a review of a book called Difficulties in Mental Prayer, by Dom Eugene Boylan – published in recent years by Baronius Press.
Many Catholics desire to maintain a practice of mental prayer. Many Catholics also complain that they find such a habit difficult – or even impossible – to establish. This problem can persist for many years.
This is a serious obstacle because many spiritual writers, including great saints, stress the importance – indeed the necessity – of mental prayer for progression in the spiritual life.
On the eve of the impending calamity of revolution in the Church, Boylan, a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Roscrea, wrote:
“If there be anything wrong with our priests and religious of today, if there be any failure even on the part of the laity to live up to the faith they undoubtedly possess, if our resistance to the infiltration of pagan civilisation, of pagan manners, and of pagan principles into our minds and hearts, into our public and private life, is not as vigorous, as sturdy, as resourceful, as it should be, the cause is surely to be found in the lack of an interior life, and, fundamentally, in the lack of such a life, in its proper measure among priests and religious.
“With the best will in the world, it is not easy to be assured that all is as it should be. There are not wanting voices – competent voices – crying out in warning; there are not lacking signs – unmistakeable signs – giving them support; it is even said that supernatural admonitions are not unheard of, all deploring the lack of due fervour and interior life in religion.
“It is not for us to attempt to pass judgment upon the state of affairs. But it is for each of us to examine his own condition, and see whether it is in harmony with the wonderful spiritual equipment that God has given each one of us in our baptism. For God Himself has come to live in our souls, to be our Guide, our Strength, our Life and our Love.”1
In the Church today, there are many men and women of good will who desire to deepen their interior life and yet – despite the stakes being so high – and despite so many resolutions being made –struggle to make this practice a part of their life.
Boylan writes in the book:
“Faced with the ever-increasing difficulty of leading a holy life in contact with a world every growing more flagrantly pagan, often urged by the more or less conscious feeling of the needs of one the most critical moments in the history of Christianity, many souls have commenced to examine the state of their spiritual health and to seek means of spiritual advancement.
“The need for greater spiritual energy has led them to consider especially their prayer, for they have come to realise that prayer is the source of their spiritual strength and the centre of their spiritual life.”2
However, tragically:
“Many find that there is something wrong with their prayer; they note a lack of progress, and ever-increasing difficulty, and even a growing distaste for that exercise. Some conclude that for them it is a mere waste of time to go on ‘praying’ as they have been doing; others find the time given to prayer a burden that is becoming well-nigh intolerable.”3
It was to provide a remedy for this problem that Dom Eugene Boylan wrote Difficulties in Mental Prayer.
About Dom Eugene Boylan
Eugene Boylan (1904-1964) was a monk of Mount St Joseph, a Cistercian abbey at Roscrea in Co. Tipperary, Ireland. Born in 1904, he entered the seminary of the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1921, but left after a couple of years, concluding that the diocesan priesthood was not his calling. He studied physics and mathematics at University College Dublin and in Vienna. He returned to Dublin to take up a position as assistant lecturer in physics, where he began to develop a reputation as a scientist.
But in 1931, he chose to abandon the world, and received the Cistercian habit at Mount St Joseph, making his final profession in 1936 and being ordained to the priesthood in 1937. He was elected abbot of the monastery in 1962, but died tragically, on 5 January 1964, after less than two years in office, following a car accident.
During his thirty-three years as a monk, Boylan gained renown as a preacher, confessor, and giver of retreats. His experience of directing souls alerted him to the many difficulties faced by those wishing to grow in the spiritual life.
Difficulties in Mental Prayer, published in 1944, was written at the encouragement of a religious who had attended one of his retreats. It quickly became a classic of spiritual writing in the English-speaking world, and has been republished many times since his death in 1964.
I will begin this review by briefly examining the nature of mental prayer and will then proceed to offer readers an insight into Boylan’s approach by expanding on one particular difficulty often encountered.
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