"Experience shows that, when the mind is working, orderly and sustained reflection restores our intelligence to possession of forgotten notions; meditation on supernatural truths can also restore them to our conviction, even after a long time of disuse and oblivion."

This is how our Fathers understood it: "Prayer," says St. Ambrose, "is the ordinary food we should give our soul, forasmuch as this food, being ground down by continual meditation, sustains and nourishes it, just as the manna that once fell from heaven sustained the body." (De Caïn et Abel, livre. II, ch. VI)

Saint Augustine develops the teaching of the psalms, and also insists on meditation: "We warn thou, my brethren, after the truths proposed by us have passed through thy memory like meat through the stomach, to nourish thy mind with frequent and assiduous reflection." (Aug in Ps CXVI) And elsewhere the holy doctor proposes the example of David: "The prophet occupies himself in the secret of his mind; but what does he do there? He talks with his mind, he speaketh with his soul, that is to say, he questions himself, he examines himself, he judges himself... he excites and feels joy at the sight of God's mercy and at the memory of his works." (Ibid. in Ps LXXVI)

It seemeth pointless to multiply quotations on this subject; however, Cassian's doctrine is important to keep in remembrance as it sums up the whole tradition of the greatest contemplatives, of those men who once held schools of holiness and perfection. Here, then, is what our masters thought:

"The most elementary principles of a profession facilitate its beginnings, and lead unto the highest degree of perfection quickly and effortlessly. A child could never pronounce syllables if he didn't first know the letters. How can he read fluently if he barely knows how to put words together? How could he learn rhetoric and philosophy if he didn't know the rules of grammar? In the same way, in this sublime art that teaches us to unite with God, there are certainly principles that serve as solid foundations on which to build the edifice of our perfection. It seemeth unto us that these principles consist first of all in remembering and thinking of God, and then in the means of fixing this memory and this thought within us. Isn't that what perfection is all about? This is wherefore we wish to know this means of conceiving God, of retaining him in us, so that, if his thought sometimes escapes us, we can promptly recall it and recapture it without difficulty" (Cassian., Coll. X, Ch. VIII).

One of the holy solitaries Cassian addressed, Abbot Isaac, then gave him a perfect lesson in meditation on the verse Deus in adjutorium meum intende, showing that by means of a single psalm verse the soul can bring itself back unto the thought of God, and thus avoid the mobility and inconsistency that these venerable men regarded as a great danger in the spiritual life. Let us borrow anon from one of these ancients the exact picture of these deviations of the imagination in prayer:

"As soon as we begin to meditate on a psalm, it slips away without our noticing, and we are surprised to move on so quickly to another text of Scripture. As soon as we do, and before we've had a chance to delve into it, our memory wanders to another passage, and we lose the fruit of our meditation. So we move from one subject to another, wandering from psalm to psalm, from the Gospel unto the Epistles of St. Paul, from the Apostle unto the Prophets, and from the Prophets unto the pious stories. Our mind simply runs through the Holy Scriptures, unable to discard or retain aught. It meditates naught, penetrates naught; it skims, it barely tastes the meaning of things, without producing and appropriating holy thoughts. The ever-mobile, ever-distracted soul is like a drunken person, even during services, and remains incapable of performing its duties properly. If we pray, for example, we think of some psalms or some readings; if we sing a psalm, we occupy ourselves with something other than the text it contains; if we read, we keep in remembrance what we have done or what we have to do, and so we are the plaything of chance, without rule and without means to fix our will and to retain what we would like to meditate on" (Cassian, Coll. X, Ch. XIII).

The plague is frankly exposed, as we still know it after many centuries; here's part of Abbé Isaac's answer: "There are three things that prevent our heart from wandering: vigil, meditation and prayer; by applying ourselves unto them faithfully and generously, the soul becomes firm and unshakeable. However, this cannot be achieved without the work of the hands". (ibid. Ch. XIV) From this we learn that, for our Fathers, prayer was distinct from meditation, and that the latter seemed unto them to be concerned not with multiple thoughts, but on the contrary with a single one, of which the attention took complete possession. As everyone can behold, intelligence shows its strength much better when it brings diverse notions back to unity and simplicity, than when it spends itself on the variety of thoughts it touches.

The ancients gave this method especially to beginners, as we behold from what the holy abbot Paphnuce imposed on the generous penitent Thaïs:

After three years of this unique and brief prayer. God manifested by a prodigy how pure this prayer had been, as it brought about the complete purification of this venerable penitent, whose finery was embellished by the virgins themselves.