It is necessary, after rising in the morning, to make the Christian acts of thanksgiving, love, oblation, and a purpose of avoiding sin, along with a prayer
to Jesus and Mary to preserve you from sin during the day. Afterward make your meditation and hear Mass.
During the day you ought to make a spiritual reading, visit the Blessed Sacrament and an image of the Divine Mother.
In the evening, say your Rosary, and make an examination of conscience. Go to Communion several times in the week, according as your director may advise: you should ordinarily go to confession with the same confessor.
It would also be very profitable to make the spiritual exercises in some religious house. It is likewise necessary to honour the most holy Mary by some special devotion, such as by fasting on Saturdays. She is called the Mother of Perseverance, and she promises to obtain it for all who serve her. Ecclus 24:30 They that work by me shall not sin.
Above all, it is necessary to ask of God holy perseverance, and especially in the time of temptation, invoking then more frequently the names of Jesus and Mary as long as the temptation continues. If you act in this manner, you will certainly be saved; if not you will be certainly be lost.Food for thought, isn't it?
Friday, September 03, 2010
Praying like the saints
Prayer, according to St. Alphonsus de Liguori, is the means to salvation. Here is what the holy Doctor recommends, from his book Preparation for Death:
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6 comments:
pray that i get the chambermaid job! i prayed to Saint Joseph on your sidebar as you asked. :) thanks for everything!
good post and thanks for the prayer. i'll endeavour to practice this prayer!
Food for thought is right. To live a life as the one St. Alphonsus recommends is to have great discipline and great love of Our Lord, neither of which I, in my selfishness, have enough of. Thanks for the 'food'.
In one of his books on prayer, St. Alphonsus goes even farther. He says: he who prays is certainly saved; he who does not pray is certainly damned. He goes on: all the blessed in heaven, except infants, are there because they prayed; and all the damned in hell are there because they did not pray, or prayed very little.
Anita, that is from Preparation for Death!
There's another one called The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection, which is available in part online. I don't recall the passage I was paraphrasing as occurring exactly in Preparation for Death, though certainly the idea pervades the book. On the other hand, it probably wouldn't hurt me to read the book again.
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