Translator's Preface.
In translating the following pages from Pere St. Omer's French work, "Les plus belles Prieres de St. Alphonse," I have been largely indebted to the late Bishop Coffin, to Father Grimm, and to Father Muller, all of them sons of St. Alphonsus, from whose published works about one third of the following prayers have been taken.
By awaiting the appearance of the whole of Father Grimm's Centenary edition of St. Alphonsus' works, all, or nearly all, contained in this prayer-book might have been textually quoted from his pages ; but this would have necessitated too long a delay in giving to English-speaking Catholics the privilege of making constant use of the very words of "that sweet spirit St. Alphonsus."
Pray, Pray Always!
I.
HE who prayeth shall certainly save his soul; he who prayeth not shall certainly lose it. This justly celebrated sentence finds a fitting place at the commencement of a book which contains "the most beautiful prayers" of our modern Doctor, of him who may well be called the Doctor of Prayer.
May these words be borne in mind by all who are called to life everlasting; in other words, by all still living on the face of the earth! May they be indelibly graven on all hearts! Especially may prayer be the dearest occupation of all men's lives! For it cannot be too often repeated that: He who prayeth shall certainly save his soul; he who prayeth not shall certainly lose it.
It was neither lightly nor by chance that St. Alphonsus wrote these grave and solemn words: their truth had been impressed upon his mind during his long experience as a missionary priest, and in confirmation of it he has adduced many irrefragable proofs taken from Holy Writ and from tradition. We will give a few examples.
II.
Prayer is a sure and indispensable means of obtaining salvation and all the graces leading thereto. Convinced as I am of the necessity of prayer, I say that all books treating of spiritual subjects, all preachers in their sermons, all confessors in every confession which they hear, should attach the greatest importance to inculcating the necessity of constant prayer on the minds of their readers and hearers, and they should never tire of impressing it on them and of repeating over and over again: Pray, pray always; if you pray, you will certainly save your souls; if you do not pray, you will certainly lose them. It is true that many excellent ways of persevering in the grace of God may be recommended to souls; for instance, avoiding occasions of sin, frequenting the sacraments, resisting temptation, listening to sermons, meditating on the eternal truths, etc., all of which are most salutary practices, as every one must admit; but, I ask, of what good are sermons, meditations, and the other means suggested by the masters of the spiritual life, without prayer? since Our Lord has declared that He will only grant His grace to those who pray for it: Ask and ye shall receive (John xvi. 24). According to the ordinary course of Providence, all our meditations, resolutions, promises are useless without prayer; if we do not pray, we shall always be faithless to the lights we have received from God and to the resolutions we have taken. Because, in order to do right, to overcome temptation, to practise virtue, to observe God's law, it is not sufficient to have received divine lights, to have meditated, and to have taken firm resolutions. God's actual help is also necessary. Now, this actual help is only granted by Our Lord to those who pray perseveringly for it. The lights we receive, and the earnest consideration and firm resolutions which we make, have the effect of inciting us to have recourse to prayer in the time of temptation and when in danger of offending God: by prayer we obtain the divine help necessary for keeping us from sin, and if, under these circumstances, we were to neglect praying, we should undoubtedly be lost.
The texts of Scripture which prove the necessity we are under of praying, if we wish to be saved, are extremely clear: We ought always to pray (Luke
xviii. i). Watch ye, and pray that ye enter not into temptation (Matt. xxvi. 41). Ask, and it shall be given you (Matt. vii. 7).
Theologians are of opinion that this way of speaking imposes the precept and denotes the necessity of prayer. Hence the learned Lessius asserts that it cannot be denied, without sinning against faith, that for adults prayer is necessary to salvation; since it is evident from the Scriptures that prayer is the only means of obtaining the aids necessary to salvation.
The reason of this is that, without the help of grace, we can do nothing good. Without Me, says Jesus Christ, you can do nothing (John xv. 5). St. Augustine remarks on this subject that Oar Saviour did not say, You can complete nothing without Me; but, You can do nothing.[1] This truth was proclaimed at the second Council of Orange, when it was defined that man does no good thing except what God enables him to do by the operations of His grace. Man is therefore quite unable to work out his own salvation unassisted, since it is God's will that all he has or can have should come to him by the help of grace. Now, this grace God only grants, in the ordinary course of His providence, to those who pray for it. According to the maxim laid down by Gennadius, "No man can attain salvation without the help of God: no man can obtain this help except by prayer." This does not mean, says St. Thomas,[2] that it is necessary for us to pray in order that God may know of what we stand in need; but that we must pray in order that we ourselves may understand our need of having recourse to God to obtain the aid necessary for our salvation, and may thus acknowledge Him as the only author of all our good.
III.
HOW can we fear, says St. Augustine, that our prayers will not be granted, when God, Who is truth itself, has promised to give us all that we ask of Him? To convince ourselves of this, let us weigh well the terms employed by our divine Saviour: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. . . . Your Father Who is in heaven will give good things to them that ask Him (Matt. vii. 7). Ask, and it shall be given you (Luke xi. 9) — all that we ask we shall obtain: Ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you (John xv. 7). Whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done to them by My Father Who is in heaven (Matt, xviii. 19). But we must ask in the name of Jesus: If you shall ask Me anything in My name, that I will do (John xiv. 14). Amen, amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you (John xvi. 23), provided we pray with faith and confidence: All things whatsoever ye ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you (Mark xi. 24).
By these promises God has bound Himself to grant us the graces which we ask of Him. St. John Chrysostom also says that no man is so powerful as he that prayeth; and why? Because prayer makes him a participant in divine power.
Everything then becomes possible to us by means of prayer; by it we obtain from Our Lord the strength of which we stand in need. Prayer is all-powerful, says Theoderet; it alone is sufficient to obtain for us everything we require. According to St. Bonaventure, it procures us all good things, and frees us from all evil things. Prayer, says St. Bernard, is more powerful than all the devils. In fact, by prayer the soul acquires a divine virtue which places it above all created powers.
IV.
Pray, Pray Always!
WE are perfectly inexcusable if we neglect prayer, for the grace of prayer is given to even* one. It is always in our power to pray if we only wish to do so. God will have all nun to be saved (1 Tim. ii. 4). Luther and Calvin asserted therefore a blasphemy when they said that since Adam's sin the observance of God's law is impossible to mortals; and Jansenius was equally guilty when he asserted that we have been deprived of that grace which would have rendered the fulfilment of the divine precepts possible to us. The Church has condemned these doctrines; the holy Council of Trent has declared that God commands nothing that is impossible, but that He tells us to do our best aided by ordinary grace, and to ask of Him the increase of grace which is necessary to enable us to accomplish that which, without that help, we could not perform; and then by making up for our weakness He renders all things possible to us. [3] Hence it ensues that God gives, or at any rate offers, to all men either the proximate grace necessary for the observance of His Commandments, or, at any rate, the remote grace, i.e., the grace of prayer, by means of which each person can obtain the proximate grace of which he has need to fulfil the duties imposed upon him by the law of God.
However, it cannot be doubted that, in the present state of our corrupt nature, the observance of the divine law is very difficult, and even morally impossible, without the special help of God and a greater help than was necessary when we were in a state of innocence. Now, this special help, God, generally speaking, only imparts to those who ask for it; and, according to St. Augustine,[4] with the exception of the first graces, such as vocation to the faith or to penance (graces which we receive without our own co-operation), all the others, notably that of perseverance, are only given to those who pray.
Our Lord, then, is ready to grant us salvation and all the graces necessary for attaining it, but He exacts that we should demand them unceasingly, even to importunity. Men cannot bear with those who are importunate, but it is quite different with God: He wishes that we should do violence to Him by prayer. This violence is most agreeable to Him, says Tertullian.
V.
Sinners, then, wrongly excuse themselves by alleging that they have not the strength to resist temptation. But, replies the Apostle St. James to them, if your strength is not sufficient, you have not because you ask not (James iv. 2). For, God is faithful, says St. Paul, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able (1 Cor. x. 13). That is to say, God, by His grace, makes us capable of resisting all temptations. When we invoke Him, He imparts His divine strength to us and then we are capable of all things, as the Apostle says of himself: I can do all things in Him Who strengtheneth me (Phil. iv. 13).
We may conclude from what we have said that, he who prayeth shall certainly save his soul; he who prayeth not shall certainly lose it. All the blessed, except the little children, have saved their souls by prayer. All the damned have lost their souls by not having prayed: had they prayed they would not have lost their souls; their greatest suffering in hell is and always will be the thought of how easily they might have saved their souls by asking the necessary graces from God, whereas now they are no longer able to do so. Therefore,
Pray, pray always!
St. Teresa was accustomed to say that she would have wished to place herself on the summit of a mountain, whence she could be heard by all living souls, solely that she might cry out to them,
Pray, pray always!
VI.
We have here, then, given a summary of St. Alphonsus' magnificent and consoling doctrine concerning prayer. He did not content himself with recording this salutary teaching in numerous parts of his writings, but he also put his teaching in practice by composing a great number of formulas equally admirable for their substance and their form, and all of them bearing the impress of the Spirit of God. A heavenly unction will always impart a singular charm to them. The Saint wrote them from his heart; one might even say he dipped his pen in the blood of the burning Heart of Jesus. Many of them were written immediately after his having been in a state of ecstatic prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, or the crucifix, or the venerated image of Mary. They speak the language of the heart, of a heart wounded by divine love, a heart that fully recognizes how worthy is its own well-beloved of being loved by all men. Who is there that in hours of solitude, or when prostrate at the feet of his God, has not felt his heart melted and inflamed when repeating and reiterating the living words suggested by our sweet and sympathetic writer? It is at such times that we realize the truth of what has been said by Lacordaire. " Love makes use of but one word, but though that word is ever recurring, it is never repeated." If a seraphim were to descend from heaven and try to clothe his consuming love for God in human language, where could he find more divinely impassioned words than those of our author?
The habitual use of these formulas cannot fail to be of the greatest utility to the faithful. By reading and re-reading these short, incisive, burning aspirations, men will learn how to speak to God, by constantly addressing these holy affections to Him, they will learn to offer them as their own heart-felt and spontaneous outpourings; they will themselves soon acquire a great aptitude for ejaculatory prayer, and, their own good-will being aided by grace, they will easily learn to converse continually with God, even amidst the most engrossing occupations.
VII.
Besides their own intrinsic value, the prayers of St. Alphonsus bear the highest guarantees.
I. They were composed by an author whom the Church has placed amongst her saints, and doubtless they were one of the principal means which he himself employed to attain such high perfection.
II. They emanate from a saint of such 'eminent science that the Holy See has honored him with the rare and glorious title of Doctor of the Universal Church.
III. They were most minutely examined and carefully sifted at the time of the promotion of the causes of their author's beatification, canonization, and doctorate.
IV. They are the work of an apostolic man whose special mission it evidently was, by means of his preaching, his writing, and the Institute which he founded, to inculcate in souls the importance, necessity, and efficacy of prayer for obtaining eternal salvation. So much so that those who have gone through his works, specially the one entitled The Great Means of Salvation, have unanimously proclaimed him the Apostle and Doctor of Prayer.
V. To all these recommendations may be added that of the experience that has been made of their utility among the faithful, who for the last century have eagerly sought after these pious formulas, and taken delight in the delicious and life-giving manna therein contained.
VIII.
Our own share in the present work has been that of compiling. We have collected the most beautiful of those prayers of St. Alphonsus which are scattered through the numerous volumes of his Ascetic and Dogmatic Works, and we have arranged them in methodical order so as to make them useful to all. Many persons had expressed a hope that such a compilation would some day be issued, and we now offer it to them in a convenient form, and hope it may meet their wishes. A glance at the Table of Contents will show that we have essayed to form a complete manual. All the indulgences mentioned may be gained by all the faithful in general, unless the contrary be expressly stated, and they are all to be found in " The Raccolta," published by order of His Holiness Pope Pius IX. [5]
We have placed at the commencement a calendar containing a sentence from our holy author for each day of the year, and we recommend its attentive perusal to the faithful.
May many souls profit by this collection of prayers, which is but a prolonged echo of those salutary words so often repeated by St. Alphonsus,
Pray, pray always!
Incarnate Word! Thou didst give Thy blood and Thy life to fulfil Thy promise of giving to our prayers a marvellous efficacy in obtaining all of which we stand in need. Why then, alas! are we so negligent as not even to give ourselves the trouble of asking for those graces which are necessary to our salvation? By conferring on us this great means of prayer Thou hast given us the key of Thy storehouse of divine treasures; but if we do not pray, we shall certainly remain in our present miserable state. Dear Lord! enlighten us that we may understand how powerful with Thine eternal Father are those prayers which we address to Him in Thy name and through Thy merits.
Mary, august Mother of God! do thou obtain for us the spirit of prayer, so that, in all our necessities, we may never fail to have recourse to thy divine Son and to thee, for thou art the distributor of all graces and the Mother of mercy; thou wilt not allow any client of thine to go away empty-handed. All-powerful Virgin, thou dost obtain from God all that thou askest in behalf of thy faithful servants.