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St Philip Neri in the 16th century would gather those each day who were desirous of seeking Christian perfection. He would read from a spiritual book and then discourse on the meaning of what was read. This podcast (and the nightly prayer group from which it springs) seeks to carry on St Philip’s method of helping people become holy, even saints, in their own homes.
Episodes
Wednesday Jan 07, 2026
Wednesday Jan 07, 2026
Thursday Jan 01, 2026
Thursday Jan 01, 2026
Thursday Jan 01, 2026
Thursday Jan 01, 2026
Thursday Jan 01, 2026
Tuesday Dec 30, 2025
Tuesday Dec 30, 2025
Tuesday Dec 30, 2025
Monday Dec 29, 2025
Monday Dec 29, 2025
Monday Dec 29, 2025
Monday Dec 29, 2025
Tuesday Dec 23, 2025
Tuesday Dec 23, 2025
Why does St Teresa say that she has never quite explained this supernatural kind of prayer as she explains it here? She is explaining in a new way the transition from a good form of prayer (meditation = thinking, imagining God within the soul) to another kind of prayer (supernatural prayer or contemplation).
Meditation = anyone with the help of God can practice this kind of awareness of God within.
Supernatural prayer = quite different, love can already be awakened before one even thinks of God; Christ the Shepherd calls us; we enter within the Castle where God is; this deeper recollection is by His gift; we gradually retire within ourselves to be with Him.
If St Teresa could grow in her ability to understand this new gift of prayer, if she could grow in her ability to explain it, there it is okay for us to not understand everything all at once. It is okay for human beings to be confused at times and to gradually learn how to explain things. We need to be open and docile to the mystery of God. We need to be open to gaining new insights into His plan and into those he puts in our path. Our goal is to accept what He wills because he wills it. Purity of love is the path to contemplation.
Tuesday Dec 23, 2025
Tuesday Dec 23, 2025
Can the grace of contemplation be achieved by human effort alone? Can we fatigue ourselves sufficiently to produce contemplation? No. Human effort and meditation does not produce contemplation on its own. This living water can only be given by God when and where He wills. Does effort matter then? Yes. Strive to be humble. Strive to suffer and imitate Jesus. Strive to love God without self-interest. Strive to be close to Jesus. Strive to serve our brothers and sisters out of a desire to please God. These are preparations for the living water to spring up. Humility. Humility. "God exalts those who humble themselves."
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Is this Prayer of Quiet, this supernatural way of prayer, able to be striven after or is it a gift? Both. The prayer itself is the gift of Jesus, the gift of living water (John 4), that enlarges our heart from within. St Teresa says: "however hard we strive, can we acquire it." This early form of contemplation is not the highest form of union, but it is "the purest gold of Divine Wisdom."
If we cannot acquire this supernatural prayer by striving, why does she tell her sisters you will "desire to strive to attain this way of prayer, and you will be right to do so"? She will answer this question as she goes along. But up to this point in the book, what can we say?
To have this gift in any kind of regular way, we need a basin. We need, that is, to be solid and shaped as God wants us to be. We need to be obedient. We need to be humble. We need to practice fraternal charity. Strive after these things and we will be striving after this higher way of prayer. Above all, strive by desiring, by asking for it.
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
How can a basin of water be filled? Two ways. 1) The noisy one, with great effort, bringing the water from a distance by conduits. 2) Having a fountain right in the basin, filing it without effort and noise.
Way 1 = meditation = gaining God's love by way of thoughts (images), the work of understanding, our own fatiguing effort, leading to sweetness and satisfaction and loving movements of the will.
Way 2 = Prayer of Quiet, consolations from God = supernatural prayer, prayer that springs up in the heart by gift of God not by human effort.
This new kind of prayer, this new activity of God is experienced, she says, in the centre of the soul, like water springing up in the basic on a fountain. The centre of the soul is where God dwells. He is pouring this Prayer of Quiet into us.
Even if we have not experienced what she is describing here, her discussion and example is very useful to us.
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
How should we react to the weakness of our human nature, especially our weak imagination? St Teresa says: react with gentleness. Our imagination (= "thought") bears the effects of original sin. Instead of being perfectly docile to reason (= "understanding"), our imagination often goes off "on its own" in many directions, confused and excited. This (almost) independent imagination is part of the lack of original justice or harmony within the human person. The loss itself of original justice -- through the sin our own first parents -- is not the personal fault of you or me. The fact that we have bodily and mental sufferings (at all) in not our own personal fault. The fact that there is a devil who tempts us is not our own personal fault.
Yes, we have personal sins. Yes, we have committed sins that aggravate our situation; but the fact of original sin and the angelic sin of the devil and the fallenness of our world, these are not our fault, our personal responsibility. We are like sheep without a shepherd. This is why Jesus came!
He has compassion on us. May we be gentle with ourselves and our wild imaginations (= thought) as we pray for the manifestation of His love (to our understanding and will).
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
St Teresa begins to talk about another grace than the prayer of meditation. Meditation seeks to think much about God, to use the understanding, in order to awaken the will to devotion. But what happens when love begins to dominate prayer? What happens when a loving knowledge enters the soul without long processes of thinking? The Fourth Mansions are dealing with this supernatural prayer, the infusion of divine contemplation. In this prayer, in order to keep ascending, "the important thing is not to think much, but to love much." She urges us to do that which most leads to love.
In this passage, St Teresa gives a wonderful description of the signs of charity, divine love. Charity makes us want to please God in everything, in no way to offend Him. Charity makes us pray for the honour and glory of His Son and the growth of the Catholic Church. Apostolic fruitfulness especially begins as God awakens this higher love in us.