What Do the Saints Say About Mental Prayer?

The Saints, Experts and Witnesses of Prayer

On prayer, the saints are not theorists: they are practitioners. What an astronomer is to the stars, they are to communion with God—not spectators, but men and women who have spent their lives in mental prayer, up to several hours a day, sometimes entire nights, until it became the air they breathed. Their authority is not primarily bookish; it is experiential. When Saint Teresa of Avila describes the states of prayer, she is not speculating: she describes what she has gone through. This is what tradition calls the “science of the saints”—a knowledge of God acquired not by study alone, but by love and frequentation.

This is why the Church, in proclaiming some of them doctors, has officially recognized the doctrinal value of their spiritual teaching. Four of these great masters rank among the Doctors of the Church: Teresa of Avila (proclaimed in 1970), John of the Cross (1926), Francis de Sales (1877), Thérèse of Lisieux (1997). It is their doctrine as a whole — including their teaching on prayer — that the Church thus guarantees, not a proclamation awarded for prayer alone. Their word on prayer is not just one pious opinion among others: it is a guaranteed treasure that the Church proposes to all.

Unanimity Across the Centuries

The most striking argument, however, is not the authority of each, but their agreement. Take a monk of the desert of the fourth century, a fourteenth-century Italian mystic, a Carmelite of the sixteenth, a bishop of the Renaissance, a little Norman nun of the nineteenth: they have neither the same language, nor the same culture, nor the same spiritual school. And yet, on the essentials of mental prayer, they converge. This convergence is not the result of copying: it comes from the fact that they have all touched the same reality. One does not describe a country in the same way if one has not seen it; one describes it similarly when one has walked there.

This florilegium thus follows two movements. First, it lets the great voices be heard one by one—each master with his or her face, history, and unique accent. Then, it gathers what all hold in common, to show that the doctrine of mental prayer is not a matter of school, but the common good of the saints.

Before the portraits, we must listen to the definitions—those concise formulas in which centuries of experience are condensed into a single phrase. They do not contradict each other: they illuminate the same reality from different angles. The Catechism has gathered them at the head of its treatise on prayer.

Saint John Damascene: "the elevation of the soul to God"

The most classic definition, the one the Catechism places in the forefront, comes from a Greek Father of the eighth century, the last of the great Doctors of the East:

"Prayer is the elevation of the soul to God or the asking of fitting goods from God." — Saint John Damascene, The Orthodox Faith, III, 24, cited in the Catechism § 2559^[1]

Everything is said in a word: to pray is to ascend—to go out of oneself, out of one's worries, out of one's pride, to rise toward Him who is higher. And the Catechism immediately adds the condition for this ascent: "It is he who humbles himself who is exalted. Humility is the foundation of prayer."^[2]

Evagrius Ponticus: "a commerce of the mind with God"

Already in the fourth century, in the deserts of Egypt, the monk Evagrius Ponticus had left a little treatise on prayer that set the vocabulary of mental prayer for centuries. A note on his rank: Evagrius (c. 345–399) was never canonized by the Catholic Church, and some of his speculative theses of Origenist inspiration were condemned after his death. The Second Council of Constantinople (553) anathematizes Origen; it is by the edict of Patriarch Eutychius, giving effect to the council, that Evagrius was anathematized together with Didymus the Blind — a condemnation subsequently confirmed, with Origen, by the Sixth and Seventh Councils^[3]. But his maxims on prayer, long transmitted under the name of Saint Nilus, were received by the whole tradition: it is in this capacity — an ancient master of mental prayer, not a canonized saint — that he appears here. His definition anticipates, a thousand years in advance, that of Teresa of Avila:

"Prayer is a commerce of the mind with God." — Evagrius Ponticus, Treatise on Prayer, ch. 3^[4]

And he drew from it the highest consequence, which became an axiom of the entire contemplative tradition: true knowledge of God is not acquired in books, but in prayer.

"If you are a theologian, you will truly pray; and if you truly pray, you are a theologian." — Evagrius Ponticus, Treatise on Prayer, ch. 60^[5]

Saint Teresa of Avila: "an intimate exchange of friendship"

Yet it is the definition of a Spanish Carmelite of the sixteenth century that has become the accepted definition of mental prayer in the Church: the Catechism quotes it word for word.

"Mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing but an intimate exchange of friendship, in which one often converses alone to alone with that God by whom one knows oneself to be loved." — Saint Teresa of Avila, The Book of Her Life, ch. 8, cited in the Catechism § 2709^[6]

She shifts the center of gravity: from man's effort ("the elevation") to the reciprocity of friendship. To pray is no longer only to ascend to God, but to know oneself already loved and to respond to that love.

The Peasant of Ars: "I look at Him and He looks at me"

The simplest of all the definitions does not come from a doctor, but from an illiterate peasant of the parish of Ars, caught by his holy Curé spending long hours motionless before the tabernacle. Pressed to say what he was doing, he replied in his dialect:

"Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. 'I look at Him and He looks at me,' said, in the time of his holy Curé, the peasant of Ars praying before the tabernacle." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2715^[7]

"I look at Him and He looks at me": in seven words, this peasant has said what the doctors take chapters to explain. At the summit, prayer is no longer a discourse, nor even a thought: it is an exchange of loving gazes. All the masters return to this—mental prayer begins with words, and ends in a gaze.

A Reformer Who Staked Everything on Prayer

No saint is more identified with mental prayer than Teresa of Jesus (1515–1582), Spanish Carmelite, reformer of Carmel, the first woman proclaimed Doctor of the Church (1970). Her very life is a plea: entering Carmel at twenty, she passed through long years of mediocrity and dryness—nearly eighteen years, she says, during which she struggled in prayer with almost no consolation—before a decisive conversion around the age of forty. From this painful experience, she drew a conviction that she hammered home all her life: one is never lost by persevering in prayer; one is almost never saved by abandoning it.

"A Determined Determination"

Her pedagogy is summed up first in a watchword: firm resolution. Against all excuses—"I don't have time," "I'm too distracted," "I get nothing out of it"—she opposes what she calls a "determined determination" never to turn back:

"A great and very determined determination is needed never to stop until one reaches the source of living water, come what may, whatever may happen, whatever the cost." — Saint Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection, ch. 21^[8]

Friendship and Fire

For Teresa, prayer is neither austere nor cold: it is a love story. Her definition of prayer as an "intimate exchange of friendship" (see above) governs everything else. The soul does not have to "succeed" in its prayer as in an exercise; it only has to stand, poor and loving, before a Friend who loves it first. And of this friendship, she describes with unmatched precision the degrees—which she compares to the four ways of watering a garden, then to the seven Mansions of an interior castle. For this map of ascent, see the file The Way of Prayer: Teresa is the principal guide there.

Finally, to her we owe, in the famous bookmark found in her breviary after her death, the purest act of trust in all mysticism—the very climate of her prayer:

"Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience obtains all things. He who possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices." — Saint Teresa of Avila, Poems ("The Bookmark of Saint Teresa")^[9]

The Imprisoned Reformer

Companion of Teresa in the reform of Carmel, John of the Cross (1542–1591) was its masculine counterpart and the greatest mystical poet of the Spanish language—he too a Doctor of the Church (1926). His doctrine of prayer was forged in trial: imprisoned by his own brothers who opposed the reform, locked for nine months in a cell in Toledo, it was there, in utter deprivation, that he composed part of his Spiritual Canticle. No one has spoken with greater depth of stripped prayer, that which remains when all consolation has vanished.

The Word is Spoken in Silence

For John of the Cross, the great language of God is not noise, but silence. His most famous maxim condenses his entire doctrine of interior listening:

“The Father spoke but one word: it was his Son. And in an eternal silence he always speaks it; it is in silence that the soul must hear it.” — Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love^[10]

Hence his pedagogy: to silence within oneself the tumult of thoughts, images, and personal desires, so that the one Word may be heard. Advanced prayer is no longer a work of the mind multiplying considerations, but a loving silence in which the soul allows itself to be gazed upon.

The Nights: When God Weans to Unite

John of the Cross is above all the master of the “nights”—those dark passages where God withdraws sensible consolations (night of the senses), then even the supports of the mind (night of the spirit), to purify love and bind it to himself alone. Where the beginner thinks he is regressing, the master sees God working in depth. Aridity is not, for him, a failure of prayer: it is often its most secret progress. For details on these nights, see The Way of Prayer. His compass is summed up in a phrase, which he placed at the end of every life of prayer:

“In the evening of this life, you will be examined on love.” — Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love^[11]

Making Holiness Accessible to the World

If Teresa and John of the Cross are the masters of contemplatives, Francis de Sales (1567–1622), Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church (1877), is the master of people in the world. His great intuition, revolutionary in his time, is that prayer and holiness are not reserved for the cloister: a magistrate, a mother of a family, an artisan can and must pray, each according to his state. His Introduction to the Devout Life (1609), written for a young married woman, has become the layman’s manual of prayer.

A Simple Method, a “Spiritual Bouquet”

His method of meditation—to place oneself in the presence of God, consider a mystery, let affections arise and take a resolution, then gather a “spiritual bouquet” to breathe throughout the day—has remained the ABC of prayer for generations. For detailed practice, see How to Grow in Prayer. Francis de Sales infused it with all his gentleness: no tension, no striving for performance, but a peaceful fidelity.

His doctrine is often summed up in a maxim traditionally attributed to the saint: half an hour of prayer each day — and a full hour when one is very busy.^[12]

The paradox, intentional, awakens: it is not leisure that makes room for God, but the decision to make room for him first, especially when everything conspires to drive him out.

Patience with Oneself

No one has better taught gentleness toward oneself in the struggle with distractions—this art of returning to God a hundred times without becoming irritated at having strayed:

“If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back gently to its point […]. And even if you did nothing during the whole hour of prayer but bring your heart back and place it again close to Our Lord, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.” — Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part II, ch. 7^[13]

The Great Modern Saint of Trust

A little Norman Carmelite who died at twenty-four (1873–1897), Thérèse of the Child Jesus was proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1997—the youngest ever. She wrote neither treatise nor system: her “little way” of spiritual childhood made prayer accessible to the humblest, freeing it from the idea that great methods or great lights are needed to pray. To those intimidated by Teresa of Avila’s degrees, she teaches that love is enough.

“A Surge of the Heart, a Simple Glance”

Her definition of prayer, taken up by the Catechism at the head of its entire treatise (§ 2558), is doubtless the most beloved by Christians:

“For me, prayer is a surge of the heart, it is a simple glance cast toward Heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, in the midst of trial as in the midst of joy.” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Autobiographical Manuscripts, cited in Catechism § 2558^[14]

She confesses, moreover, with disarming humility, her own dryness and distractions—even to the point of falling asleep at prayer—without ever being troubled by it: “I ought to be distressed by it. I think that little children are as pleasing to their parents when they are asleep as when they are awake.”^[15] This peace in poverty is, in itself, a lesson in prayer.

The Doctor of the “Great Means”

Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (1696–1787), bishop, founder of the Redemptorists, Doctor of the Church (1871), and patron of moral theologians, devoted an entire treatise to prayer, The Great Means of Prayer (1759), which he considered his most useful work. His thesis is clear-cut: prayer is not an ornament of the devout life; it is morally necessary for the salvation of adults, for God ordinarily gives His grace to those who ask for it.

“He who prays will certainly be saved; he who does not pray will certainly be damned.” — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The Great Means of Prayer, Part I, ch. I^[16]

The formula is deliberately stark: it does not say that mechanical prayer saves as if by magic, but that the soul that ceases to pray cuts itself off from the channel through which grace comes. Mental prayer, the prolonged prayer of the heart, is the school where one learns to ask without growing weary. This is why Alphonsus exhorted not to wait until one felt inclined: “He who prays obtains from God all that he desires.”^[17]

Before the great Carmelites and modern bishops, mental prayer had its masters in the deserts and the early centuries. Their voices, more austere, retain a freshness like that of a spring.

Saint Augustine: Desire That Prays Without Ceasing

The great Doctor of Hippo (354–430) made prayer the breath of desire. For him, to pray without ceasing (1 Th 5:17) is not to repeat formulas endlessly, but to desire continually: as long as the desire for God endures, prayer does not cease. And this desire comes from beyond ourselves—from a heart made for God and which cannot rest until it has found Him:

“You have made us for Yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.” — Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book I, 1^[18]

Evagrius and Cassian: Continual Prayer and the Formula

The monks of East and West sought the secret of “praying always.” Evagrius (see above) taught to keep the mind at rest, stripped of all images, so that it might be united to God. John Cassian (c. 360–435), who transmitted the wisdom of the Desert Fathers to the West, recommended in his Conferences a short formula repeated without ceasing to fix the heart in the presence of God—“O God, come to my assistance; Lord, make haste to help me” (Ps 69)—ancestor of the monologic prayer and the prayer of the heart. The lesson of the ancients is constant: better a word repeated from the heart than a torrent of words.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa: To Pray or to Separate Oneself from God

The Cappadocian Father (c. 335–395) expressed the necessity of prayer with striking conciseness:

“He separates himself from God who does not attach himself to God by prayer.” — Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Our Father^[19]

And he unfolded its richness: “Prayer is conversation with God, contemplation of the invisible […], equality of honor with the angels, progress in good, turning away from evil.”^[20] Long before the moderns, mental prayer is already called “conversation” and “contemplation.”

Saint Catherine of Siena: The Inner Cell

The great Dominican mystic (1347–1380), Doctor of the Church (1970), gave mental prayer an unforgettable image: the “inner cell of self-knowledge.” Rather than fleeing to the desert, she taught to build within oneself a cell where one dwells with God, even in the midst of activity:

In her letter to Sister Alessia on perfection, she orders her to make for herself, besides her nun's cell, “another spiritual dwelling” to carry always with her: the cell of true self-knowledge, united to that of the goodness of God — and never to leave it^[21].

In her Dialogue, she indissolubly links prayer to humble truth about oneself: “Nothing makes one taste this truth better, nothing gives so much light to the soul as humble and continual prayer, founded on the knowledge of self and of God.”^[22] Mental prayer and humility always rise together.

A final group of witnesses taught, more than any others, how to extend prayer beyond the set time of prayer, until the whole of life becomes a continual heart-to-heart with God.

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection: God in the Kitchen

A humble Discalced Carmelite of the 17th century (c. 1614–1691), employed in the kitchens of his convent, Brother Lawrence left only a few conversations and letters, collected under the title The Practice of the Presence of God—one of the greatest little books of spirituality. His discovery is this: one can make one's entire day a continual prayer, simply by remaining, unceasingly, in the presence of God.

“For me, the time of action does not differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several people are asking me for different things at the same time, I possess God in as great a tranquility as if I were on my knees.” — Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, The Practice of the Presence of God^[23]

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity: “A Soul of Silence”

A Carmelite of Dijon who died at the age of twenty-six (1880–1906), Elizabeth of the Trinity carried to its fullness the intuition of the presence of God within the soul: Heaven begins here below, in the inner sanctuary where the Trinity dwells. Her ideal of prayer is to become so silent within that God can impress Himself there without obstacle:

“A ‘praise of glory’ is a soul of silence who stands like a lyre under the mysterious touch of the Holy Spirit, so that He may draw forth divine harmonies from it.” — Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, Heaven in Faith^[24]

Her famous elevation—“O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to forget myself entirely so as to be established in you, motionless and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity”^[25]—is entirely a program of prayer: to forget oneself, to be established in God, to remain still under His gaze.

The Holy Curé of Ars: Love That Needs No Words

Jean-Marie Vianney (1786–1859), Curé of Ars, model for priests, was not a scholar—he struggled with his studies—but he was a great man of prayer, spending nights before the tabernacle. His doctrine of prayer is that of the simplicity of love: it is not necessary to say much in order to pray well; it is enough to love.

“One does not need to say much to pray well. We know that the good God is there, in the holy tabernacle; we open our heart to Him; we delight in His presence. That is the best prayer.” — Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars^[26]

It was also he who recounted the words of the peasant, “I look at Him and He looks at me” (see above), in which he saw the summit of prayer. And he loved to say that prayer enlarges the soul and makes it capable of God: “Prayer is nothing other than union with God.”^[27]

When we read all these voices together, four convictions recur among all, across centuries and schools. This is the core of the Catholic doctrine of prayer.

1. Prayer is necessary

No saint treats prayer as an optional extra. Alphonsus makes it a means of salvation; Gregory of Nyssa says one separates from God without it; Teresa of Avila assures that one almost always loses oneself by abandoning it. The reason is simple: the spiritual life is a relationship, and a relationship that is not nourished dies. “All those who became saints raised their souls to God through prayer,” summarizes the Curé of Ars^[28].

2. A faithful time must be kept, at all costs

All insist on fidelity to a set time, defended against excuses. It is Teresa’s “determined determination”, Francis de Sales’ “half-hour”, the absolute rule of the ancients. The Catechism has summed up the saints in a single phrase: “We do not pray when we have time: we take the time.”^[29] Humble regularity is worth more than irregular bursts.

3. One never abandons prayer in dryness

This is perhaps the most unanimous, and the most counterintuitive, point. John of the Cross sees in it the deepest work of grace; Teresa of Avila persevered for eighteen years without consolation; Thérèse of Lisieux sleeps at prayer without being troubled. All converge on this point: dryness is not a sign of failure, but often a purification; and fidelity in the night is worth a thousand consolations. To abandon prayer because it no longer gives pleasure is to confuse love with the pleasure it brings.

4. The fruit is not feeling, but humility and charity

Finally, all judge prayer not by what one feels, but by what it produces. The sign of true prayer is not an emotion, but that one comes out of it more humble, gentler, more charitable. Prayer does not turn us away from love of neighbor: it is its source.

At the end of this chorus, a note proper to the spirituality of the Divine Will extends and crowns the teaching of the saints. In the Book of Heaven, Jesus says to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947) — word received in a private revelation, not a teaching of the magisterium: the soul that prays “in” His Will no longer prays by its own strength alone, for its prayer joins that, universal, of Christ and all the saints. Living “in” the Divine Will — to put it in a child's words — is not merely doing what God asks (then there are two wills: mine which obeys, and God's which I follow); it is letting God's Will act in us as if it were our own: a single will, and the act becomes divine. See What is the difference between doing the will of God and living in the Divine Will.

“My daughter, when, in my Will, a soul prays to Me, loves Me, makes reparation, embraces Me and adores Me, I feel that all creatures pray to Me, love Me, make reparation, embrace Me and adore Me.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 12, April 2, 1921^[30]

This is the secret fulfillment of all that the saints have said: prayer that begins as “I pray to God” ends as “Thy will be done in me”, until it becomes one with it. Here we join the spirit of abandonment: the highest prayer is that in which nothing is reserved for oneself. The “Fiat” of Gethsemane — “not my will, but yours” (Lk 22:42) — is the model of all perfect prayer.

If the saints are the masters of prayer, it is because they were first disciples — of Christ and His Mother. Jesus is the supreme pray-er: the Gospel constantly shows Him withdrawing to pray, spending whole nights in prayer (Lk 6:12), praying before every great decision, up to the “Fiat” of Gethsemane. Every Christian prayer is but a participation in this prayer of the Son to the Father; to learn to pray is to let Christ pray in us.

Mary is its perfect reflection. The Gospel attributes her with almost no words, but shows her in the very attitude of prayer: she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19). To keep and ponder the Word in the silence of the heart: this is the very definition of contemplative prayer. That is why all the saints in this anthology have invoked her as Mother of the interior life — she who teaches how to pray and obtains fidelity in prayer. The choir of saints is, in the end, but a long echo of the prayer of Christ, gathered by His Mother and transmitted, from century to century, to those who wish to learn to “abide” with God.

• How to Grow in Prayer — the practical angle: the nature of prayer, the conditions for prayer to grow, a simple method to begin and persevere, the struggle with distractions and dryness.
• The Path of Prayer: Going Deep to Encounter the Triune God — the complete map of ascent: the four waters, the seven mansions, infused contemplation and the nights, according to Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross.
• Frequent Errors Concerning Prayer — misunderstandings that halt growth: seeking sensations, fleeing dryness, confusing method and goal.
• How to Grow in Interior Silence — silencing the inner noise, a condition for listening to God, dear to John of the Cross and Elizabeth of the Trinity.
• How to Grow in Lectio Divina — the prayerful reading of Scripture that nourishes prayer.
• How to Grow in Perseverance — the “determined determination” of Saint Teresa of Avila, a decisive weapon against the temptation to give up.
• How to Grow in Abandonment to God and How to Grow in Trust — the filial attitude that sustains prayer.