Tips for developing the habit of mental prayer

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YehoiakhinEx232

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I’m trying to work on developing the habit of mental prayer, earlier this afternoon I did pretty well at one attempt at meditating on a passage from St. Alphonsus’ The Glories of Mary, buy I want all the help I can get. I really want to develop this habit as quickly, ultimately because I want to be a Saint, but primarily because I desperately want to be free from sin and stop sinning.

What advice does everyone here have on developing the habit of mental prayer?
 
Here are some points

Begin with a fixed period, daily, same rough time if you can.
Get rid of distractions, phone, chat windows, etc.
Sit in a straight back chair, no slouching. Offer the effort to God as a present.
Look at the watch, go for 15 minutes or something like.
Have a plan, work the plan. Don’t go longer if it feels good, don’t go shorter if it’s dry. Do the plan.
Start with 2 minutes of absolute stillness, move not a millimeter, except calm breathing.
Start with a vocal prayer.
Bring some reading material to start the prayer…work it over, turn it inside out, ask questions to God using the material, if you will.
 
I don’t know much about mental prayer, but, let me give you an advise my self-critical self learned the hard way: You won’t be free from sin until you reunite with God in Heaven, so get confortable and just pray to sin the least possible.
 
It’s possible that God could give someone the grace to be completely free from sin at some point in their life.
 
Oh yes, that’s how you are after confession and/or Eucharist. However I think being totally free from venial sin for a prolonged time is really improbable as a human in this world, but, as you say, with God everything is possible…
 
Why not say the following prayer or something like it;

O God. I want to be holy. Please help me to develop the habit of mental prayer.
 
The easiest mental prayer is said to be this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner!” for a fixed amount of time (start with 5 minutes) or for an established amount of repetitions if you want; to can use a rosary or anything other chain that helps you count. Pray whenever the thought of you wanting to say a mental prayer comes to mind or whenever you are in need, any need.
In time Jesus will help you concentrate on saying in your mind other prayers that you already know by heart but cannot concentrate on thinking them in your head. (Our Father, The Creed).
If you want to say fixed prayers or Psalms in mentally first you have to learn them by heart as you used to learn poetry in school.
 
I started out my journey into mental prayer by just mentally praying an Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be while I waited in line. Gradually, it will creep into other areas of your life without you even realizing.

God Bless,
Br. Ben, CRM
 
To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever grasped how mental prayer is any different than silently praying to God. That is what I do most of the time anyway.

If mental prayer is something else I’d love a concise explanation.
 
Yes and no. They are primarily the same with slightly different meanings. Silent prayer is praying to God without speaking. Mental prayer is a discipline or habit of silent prayer. Ultimately, an attempt to practice mental prayer is focused on incessant prayer, as St. Paul advocates in 1 Thes. 16-18. Incessant prayer does not mean you do nothing but pray continuously, but rather that after acting you always try to return to a state of silent prayer.

I guess you could call silent prayer the ‘resting state’ of one who practices mental prayer.
 
Thank you Br. Ben!

So, Benedictine ora et labora might be an example of a habit of mental prayer?
 
In a sense, yes. Although ora et labora can also be used to describe the physical schedule of events in a monk’s day as a blend of prayer and work. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Ora et Labora, for example described the active work during the day entrusted to him by the Pope and a separate time at night for contemplation and personal prayer. His disciples said that he liked winters better because he had more time to pray.
 
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Ok. Thank you so much! You have clearered up a point of confusion for me!
 
Also, from what I understand, mental prayer (or christian meditation) isn’t so much about petitions like normal prayer i.e. a normal conversation with God, but more about contemplation and adoration, like “staring at God” without necessarily speaking to him, and it is called mental because it starts with a mental image on a christian theme (for example, the Cruxifiction, Creation, etc.).
 
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